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The Best Social Media Management Tools

Best social media management tools

Social media enables your business to increase brand awareness, generate leads, engage target audiences, increase sales, and so much more. Your customers expect it; studies show that 7 out of 10 customers are influenced by social media. If you’re not meeting your audience where they are, you’re missing opportunities to grow your customer base and, ultimately, your business. 

The Downside of Social Media Marketing

If you’re not already, it’s high time to start creating and sharing social content consistently. Managing social media may not seem like a complicated process at first, but one profile quickly turns into two, and two turns into three. Before you know it, you’re spending a lot (if not most) of your valuable time writing content, scheduling, posting, and managing your social media channels. As a small business owner or part of a small team, you may not have the staffing or resources to hire a social media professional — leaving you to do most of the work. You’re not alone, either; 43% of small businesses spend six or more hours on social media each week.

Many business owners wisely turn to social media management (SMM) tools for curating, scheduling and posting content. Here, we’re sharing some of the most popular SMM tools on the market today, their various features, and why you should look to ThumbStopper as an alternative solution.

What Are the Most Popular Social Media Management Tools?

If you do a quick search on the best social media management tools, you’ll likely see the same names appear in different lists. Some of those include: 

  • Hootsuite
  • Canva
  • Buffer
  • CoSchedule
  • Sendible

While they all help you manage your social media, each offers different features and functionality. Some are better for scheduling, some are better for sharing, and others — like Canva — are best for designing imagery for your social posts. You’ll need to consider which tool is best for you. (It might not be one of the tools on the list above.)

What Features and Functionality Should I Look For?

Each SMM tool offers its own mix of features and functionality. One of the most common features is the ability to manage all your social profiles from one tool or dashboard. With a dashboard, you don’t have to constantly log in and out of each profile to make or schedule posts. 

Other prominent features include:  

  • Scheduling post times and dates
  • Creating and design social imagery
  • Managing editorial calendars
  • Running multiple campaigns at the same time
  • Tracking comments and conversations

Several social media management tools offer free versions, but with fewer features. For example, you may be able to control only one social media profile or share a restricted number of posts before you have to upgrade to a paid version. 

Which Social Media Tool is Best for My Business?

There’s no one “best” social media management tool, as your small business has its own unique needs. Are you looking for a tool that saves you time? Money? Helps you find content to post? First, outline the current (and future) needs of your social media marketing plan. From there, you may need to undergo some trial and error before finding a tool that suits all of your needs.

What About an Alternative Solution?

The downside to social media management tools is that someone still has to manage the tools. You will save time by managing all your social profiles and posts with one tool, but that tool may still take up a lot of time. Between research, onboarding, and management, you may spend just as much valuable time looking for and learning a tool that you initially chose in order to save time.

social media management tools

Enter: ThumbStopper. We take the complexity of social media management tools out of the equation. We do all the heavy lifting by collecting high-quality images and content from the brands you carry in your store and publishing it to your social feeds. The brands appreciate the chance to reach your customers, you benefit from the quality of their content, and you gain the time and space to focus on actually running your business — not just your social channels. 

Let ThumbStopper Solve Your Social Media Management Problem

Customers who opt for ThumbStopper over the “best” social media management tools are experiencing a 50% increase in in-store traffic and up to 10x customer growth. All without lifting a finger. We specialize in retail businesses ranging from furniture and pet supplies to marine sports and golf carts. All you have to do is to select a plan that fits your business needs and customize it by the number of brands you sell and how often you want to show up in your customers’ social feeds. 
Experience the ThumbStopper effect yourself: sign up today!

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5 Social Media Tips for your Bike Shop for 2020

bike shop marketing ideas for social media

Social media is proving to be a main driver in purchase decisions and will only continue to grow in influence. We’ve compiled a few quick tips with the latest best practices to ensure your bike shop is growing socially so you can continue to grow your fans, followers, and ultimately revenue.

1. Start with Facebook

Facebook works incredibly well as a starting point for a social media strategy. Why?

This network is the powerhouse to a huge, engaged audience, combined with rich data and powerful advertising tools. It’s easy to use and gives you the ability to post photo albums, host and share events, broadcast live videos, and write in longer form. Add in the power to target posts to specific groups and Facebook will quickly become your go-to social network for small businesses. Simply put, there’s no better starting point for a successful strategy. 

2. Have Both Organic and Paid Strategies

Organic social tactics can help with things like establishing an online presence and engaging with existing customers, whereas paid social tactics can help with things like reaching new audiences and promoting products/services.

Keep in mind, the average human attention span is down to 8 seconds. Content should be short and telegraphic. Use photos and videos whenever possible. Showcase those new bikes you just got in for spring. Or share a tutorial on changing a flat.

If you’re not reposting content from your best-selling brands, you’re missing out on some great, free marketing. Chances are the brands you have in your store have a pretty healthy marketing budget to put towards rich video content, elaborate product launches, and pro sponsorships. Ride the coattails of their investment and share this content as it fits in with your social strategy.

3. Constant Engagement

Being responsive is the top thing brands can do on social to prompt consumers to purchase. Posting on a daily basis with visual content helps, too!

Once a month, look at which posts and ads are performing – and fine-tune your strategy. It’s no longer about the number of LIKES or FOLLOWERS you have…be sure to monitor whether people are engaging with your content – commenting or re-sharing.

Engagement is a two-way street so be sure and keep the conversation going with your audience. This creates a lasting impression of your brand in their minds and will keep you top of mind for all their bike needs.

4. Remember That Social Takes Time

Set aside 15 minutes a day as your “social marketing and communication time.” Use tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to pre-schedule content. If budget permits, hire or outsource. But be sure to spend an extra 15 minutes a month reviewing results. Which bicycle is most sought after? What kind of content do your followers engage with the most? Decide where to invest in social advertising and further fine-tune your shop’s social media plan.

After you have a content calendar in place, it’s important to stick with it as much as possible. Otherwise the time you put into it ends up being a waste, and we all know what that does to a small business’s bottom line. However, your plan should have some flexibility built in to accommodate things that are sure to come up throughout the year — such as product launches, reviews, and photo-worthy bike builds.

Especially with the social media algorithms in 2020, your content has to be top quality, as well as informative, engaging, educational, and entertaining. Add creative spend to your ad budget if you want to get big returns from social.

As social media becomes more complex, it’s unlikely that it will take up less of a small business’s time. However, it’s important to keep in mind that this effort isn’t being wasted—it’s a channel that’s increasingly central to people’s lives.

5. Continue to Invest 

Building successful organic and paid strategies requires consistent time and spend. Only through continual experimentation and optimization will your efforts grow more effective and sophisticated.
Ultimately, every one of the elements outlined above work together. By beginning with Facebook and crafting both paid and organic strategies, responding quickly to audiences and being mindful of not bombarding them, being patient with time, as well as investing in your online presence, bike shop owners can find sustained success on social media.

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The Benefits of Branded Content

Branded content

As a local business owner, traffic is vital to the growth and success of your entire operation.

Unfortunately, recent events have halted just that. But while your next customer may be hesitant to shop in-person, they aren’t shy of getting their fix online. Many individuals have taken to social media in recent weeks to consume news, follow business updates, and make purchases from the comfort of their home. Now, more than ever, is the perfect time to invest in a strong social presence to engage with your target audience online. For many independent businesses, balancing your operations while being an active participant on social media can feel like two full-time jobs; Retailers seldom have time to maintain a consistent social media presence. Luckily, your brand may have already done the heavy lifting for you.

A Roadmap to Success

Many franchise brands have a cohesive social media strategy in place to market their products, spending thousands, if not millions, creating digital branded content for different campaigns. And you can take advantage of that same content for your business’s social feed. By using a brand’s digital assets in your social media strategy, you can cut through the noise on social media with high-quality promotional content that is tailored to fit the brand’s message. This content can help position yourself as an authority figure within your industry and your community, increasing your business’s reputation as a result. To start, inquire with the brands to sell your product to see if they have a Digital Asset Manager (D.A.M.) or other repository to store their content. If they do not have one, consider sharing their content directly on Facebook or another social platform they use.

Focus on Engaging with Your Audience

With a social presence established and brand-curated content to pair, your business can focus on what’s important to the success of your operation: engagement. Publishing brand-curated content doubles your reputation by opening up your social feed to increased engagement with your target audience. Whether it comes in the form of likes, comments, or follows, your content provides a unique opportunity to craft new relationships with your next customer.

And at ThumbStopper, we’ve helped thousands of retailers amplify their social thumbprint and focus on engagement by automatically publishing branded content to their social feeds. If your business doesn’t have enough time to focus on social media during these trying times, drop us a line and let’s see how we can help you.

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ThumbStopper Helps Retailers Shift Their Social Media Content Into High Gear

ThumbStopper Helps Retailers Shift Their Social Media Content Into High Gear

The events surrounding COVID-19 have upended businesses big and small across the United States, forcing businesses to quickly adjust to the scarcity of physical traffic coming into their storefronts.

As individuals practice social distancing and stay-at-home measures, more and more people have turned to social media for news coverage and updates from the businesses they follow. This in turn has renewed efforts for businesses to cultivate and maintain a social presence online – despite the responsibilities surrounding their staff’s day-to-day operations.

The digital-first adjustment has impacted each business differently. But for a bicycle shop in Duluth, Minnesota that adopted ThumbStopper in February, their subscription of brand content to their social page has lifted a major weight off the shop’s co-owners during these uncertain times.

“I did a bit with Facebook – tried to keep up on it by posting bikes and such to cater to our favorite customers who followed us,” Emanoff said. “But we just couldn’t keep up with it.”

-Lee Emanoff, Co-Owner, Twin Ports Cyclery

In the new digital-first environment, this bicycle dealer can focus on engaging with their customers and managing their storefront while the ThumbStopper platform automatically delivers high-quality, digital content directly to the shop’s social feeds – straight from the brands they sell.

A Dynamic Duo Cycles Through Crisis

Denis Sauve and Lee Emanoff co-own Twin Ports Cyclery, an independent bicycle dealership in Duluth, MN. Established in 1975, Twin Ports offers a variety of bicycles across different brands and budgets, including Cannondale, Raleigh, and Jamis. The dealership is also one of the only shops that strictly caters to bicycle owners in Minnesota’s fifth-largest city.

ThumbStopper Helps Retailers Shift Their Social Media Content Into High Gear
Twin Ports Cyclery Co-Owner Lee Emanoff

“By sticking with bicycles, our employees then know the ins-and-outs about bikes, which helps them be really good with what they do for our customers,” said Emanoff.

In recent years, the husband-and-wife duo had difficulty advertising Twin Ports on digital and social media. With a website too complex for staff to manage and an inability to balance social media with the store’s day-to-day operations, Twin Ports relied heavily on “word of mouth” to get the store’s name out to their target audience.

“I did a bit with Facebook – tried to keep up on it by posting bikes and such to cater to our favorite customers who followed us,” Emanoff said. “But we just couldn’t keep up with it.”

Although St. Louis County – where Duluth is located in – has only seen 61 COVID-19 cases since its spread to the U.S., the crisis has disrupted normal operations for businesses like the bike shop, requiring staff to conduct business online and on the phone before having a customer set foot into the store.

The restrictions in effect place a greater need for businesses like Twin Ports to focus on digital channels to ensure their customers are up-to-date with timely business updates.

Lending a Helping Hand With ThumbStopper

Emanoff was present at Chicago’s CABDA Midwest bike conference, where she was first introduced to the ThumbStopper platform. She and Twin Ports never looked back afterward.

The software, which automatically deploys high-quality, brand-curated content to independent dealers’ social feeds, was a game-changer for the duo, enabling Twin Ports to receive a consistent feed of social posts featuring products the dealership sells to its customers. Within a few weeks, Twin Ports received an average 17.13% organic reach from content published to its Facebook page using ThumbStopper – 14 percentage points greater than average reach on the platform.

The influx of content has provided opportunities for the shop’s followers and interested customers to engage with the shop online – through comments, likes, and follows. Since joining ThumbStopper, Twin Ports has engaged with an additional 5,800 individuals with its content and facilitated 146 reactions among interested viewers.

“I’ve been very pleased with the positive comments [on the page] and feeling like there’s something going on that I don’t always have to keep up on,” Emanoff said. “Even though I can also post content, I know there’s something else helping do the work for us.”

Social Media: Amplified and in Full Effect

Although COVID-19 has slowed some business down for Twin Ports Cyclery, the bike shop has received continued success in the weeks since social distancing recommendations were put in place.

Twin Ports Cyclery has seen a 17% average organic reach from content deployed with ThumbStopper within the past month. During that time, the bike shop reached over 3,100 unique individuals on Facebook and amassed over 2,000 impressions despite restrictions with physical traffic.

“I didn’t know there was anybody out there that could do what ThumbStopper does,” Emanoff said. “It was a relief to know that somebody could do just that, and that the solution was reasonably priced.”

Emanoff also noted that Twin Ports will continue using the program throughout the year into the winter season, where bike sales slow down due to weather conditions. She recommends individuals take advantage of ThumbStopper because of its consistent content flow and affordable prices for independent dealers.

“I didn’t know there was anybody out there that could do what ThumbStopper does,” Emanoff said. “It was a relief to know that somebody could do just that and that the solution was reasonably priced.”

More information about Twin Ports Cyclery can be found by visiting the link here. To learn more about how ThumbStopper assists retailers in maximizing their social thumbprint online, check out the industries we support.

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How to Find Success in Facebook’s Algorithm Changes

Facebook’s Algorithm

Facebook continues to walk alongside Google and YouTube as a master of algorithmic systems, constantly refining the algorithms that prioritize what content is at the top of your news feed.

Since 2009, Facebook has used the data in its algorithms to prioritize posts differently – blending the newest posts with content that interests you and is received well by your peers. As a retailer, being aware of what interactions will garner more exposure on Facebook is essential as we go into a year where e-commerce and digital marketing channels reign supreme.

We’ve outlined some best practices to follow as you develop your content strategy to help narrow Facebook’s sweet spot – the audience interested in engaging with your content.

Engaging Content Begets Engagement

Ranking is a key component of today’s algorithms in Facebook and Google – using ranking signals to push meaningful content to the top of your news feed. But what does “meaningful” mean, exactly?

You want to create posts that are thought-provoking and let your followers know that you value their input – encouraging them to comment and interact directly with your content.

Here’s an example of a Facebook post that did just that:

How to Find Success in Facebook’s Algorithm Changes

Their content was written in a way that prompted a conversation and resonated with their followers. Take notes on how Honda personalized their status; it’s a gateway to reach more eyes on your content without tons of ad spend.

Post When Your Followers Are Most Active

Whether you are a B2C or B2B business, the strength of your content’s ranking on Facebook is dependent on the time of day that you post. 

As a B2B business, you’ll want to post from early in the day to about 2 p.m. to maximize the reach you receive from individuals before they get to work and during breaks. B2C schedules can vary depending on the proximity of your audience – whether they are local or abroad. We recommend checking out a social media automation tool that automatically posts content at the time of your liking. Just craft your post, schedule it, and never worry again about whether it was posted on time.

But be sure to experiment with the times that work best for your business. Testing high performing posts at different times can give you an understanding of unconventional times that may favor your target audience. Posting during business hours is just a best practice – don’t be afraid to test the waters and go beyond that range.

Post Often and Consistently

Following a schedule is one way you can get users to know when to expect content. Since Facebook pages that post more are seen as more meaningful to the platform’s algorithm, set up a social media content calendar that will set you up for success in the coming weeks and months. That, combined with automatic social media posting, will give you clear insights on what’s working and what isn’t. 

We hope these best practices are helpful to get you more leverage on Facebook in terms of viewership and interaction. If you’ve still got questions on how to craft a social media strategy that will get you seen on Facebook, be sure to contact us and we’ll show you how we’ve helped thousands of businesses automate their content strategy.

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Why Social Media Management Tools Can’t Scale Your Content

social media management tools

Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, Hubspot; you’ve heard these names before – social media management tools that help automate your workflow and deploy your brand’s content on various social platforms at the time of your choosing. If you are a small or medium-sized brand operating with a handful of retailers in your ecosystem, these tools are more than enough to amplify your social presence.

But what if you have tens, hundreds, or even thousands of independent retailers, all selling your products? Chances are, those same management tools can’t provide the things you need most for your social strategy: segmentation, access, and therefore scalability.

Brands and retailers understand the importance of delivering high quality, brand-curated content at the local level. If you operate in a brand-to-local model that relies on independent retailers, localizing your brand content through your retailers can help your content go much further, providing your expensive marketing assets a much longer runway to work for you.

But if you don’t have the ability to effectively segment and syndicate that content at scale, everyone loses.

Not All Tools Scale Alike

Scalability in social marketing is vital to achieving the maximum amplification of your brand. You know this already, but it’s difficult to find a tool that effectively scales to meet the intricacies of your brand and retail network.

Unfortunately, many social management tools that offer enterprise plans for interested brands simply don’t go far enough to cover every single independent retailer in your network and their unique needs. What’s more, once you’ve bought the software, you are left on your own to onboard each of your hundreds or thousands of retailers. Getting the attention of your entire retail network and getting them on-boarded with a new platform can be costly and time-consuming, especially if you don’t have a framework for an effective adoption strategy that you’ve used in the recent past. What’s more, if social tokens break or fail, troubleshooting and re-establishing retailers can be burdensome and tedious. When considering software solutions for your network, you need to ensure that you have a plan to successfully onboard your network or a partner that has the expertise to do it for you.

And the problem isn’t just a matter of how many people you can deploy to; once they’re on board, you still have to find a way to ensure that Retailer A–who only sells Widget A–doesn’t mistakenly get content for Widgets B and C. When you have a diversified product line that serves different markets and considerations like language, location, climate, regional regulations and other factors come into play, the same considerations must factor into your digital content syndication as well.

social media management tools

The Tool You Didn’t Know You Needed

We believe that it’s important to have a tool that can effectively segment your content while maximizing its reach across your entire retail network.

Enter ThumbStopper.

social media management tools

With machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence in our software, we’ve made it easy to ensure your brand’s content is in the right place at the right time while synchronizing your brand’s messaging across your entire network of local retailers. Through our Brand Manager™, we’ve enabled brands to deploy their digital content to their subscribed retailers with ease and efficiency.

Our tool allows brands to manage the content flow to their retail network without having to ask the retailer to do anything once they’re connected, making it possible to maximize the ROI from the content your brand creates to establish a powerful network effect.

What’s more, each instance of our software comes with a dedicated Brand Concierge, focused on maximizing the adoption rate of your retail network. Our extensive knowledge in working with brands that rely on a large network of independent retailers means that we know exactly how and when to communicate with your distributors, sales team, and retailers to ensure everyone is in-the-know and connected to your brand’s program.

ThumbStopper turns the once tedious work of onboarding retailers and deploying content into a passive afterthought rather than an active responsibility. ThumbStopper brand clients spend an average of 1-2 hours per month in our software but see an average of 300% more impressions on social media for the effort.Interested in learning more? Drop us a line and find out how thousands of business partners are achieving maximum brand amplification at scale with ThumbStopper.

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What to Consider for Your Small Business Marketing Strategy

social media for small business, social media marketing

Is social media marketing a part of your small business marketing strategy? If not, you might reconsider. Here are three key statistics from HubSpot on consumer behavior in the social media realm:

  • 42% of the world’s population are active on social media (that’s 3 billion people!)
  • Half of social media users utilize social media to research products
  • Social media is the single greatest source of inspiration for a consumer to convert from “browser” to “purchaser.” 37% of social media users reported finding inspiration to buy, more than any other medium. Many of these users reported “trust in the brand” as one of the primary reasons to purchase.
  • A small business with a polished, coordinated and thoughtful social marketing strategy can reach the masses and improve conversions of interested customers. But, not any haphazard social media marketing approach will work. In fact, scattershot posts at inconsistent intervals can have a detrimental effect on the business’ bottom line. What small businesses need in a digital marketing strategy is carefully-timed content that resonates with their customers.

It’s Not Just the First Impression That Matters Anymore

Consumers are better informed and more discerning than at any other time in history. Within seconds, a potential buyer can engage with other buyers, compare prices, and form an opinion of a business’ brand through social media. A small business with an excellent social media strategy can turn this challenge into sales through:

  • Direct customer engagement
  • Posting relevant and persuasive content at times when the customer is actively engaged in researching a product
  • Carefully engaging their potential customer at “off” times without becoming an annoyance

Sure, But What About All of My Other Hats?

Think about all of the responsibilities of a small business owner. From bookkeeping, to human resources, to operations and sales, the small business owner has his or her hand’s full. Crafting an effective social media strategy can be time consuming, expensive, and might require more trial and error that a small business can withstand. ThumbStopper is the solution to small business’ social media marketing.

How Does ThumbStopper Help With Social Media Marketing?

ThumbStopper gathers media generated by the brands you sell and automates the flow of that content for small businesses. The content is relevant and engaging to consumers across all of the major social platforms. Small businesses build their own brand and effectively market across all social media platforms with ThumbStopper’s software, and precious time is freed up for business owners to actually run their own business. Imagine: more leads, more conversions and better branding at the fraction of the cost of a marketing department.

Imagine: more leads, more conversions and better branding at the fraction of the cost of a marketing department.

Ready to Let the Experts Help?

ThumbStopper is available for small business owners in a large variety of industries. For a couple of cups of coffee a month, you can have an automatic improvement to your social media with content from the brands you sell. To check out the brands we syndicate content from and the verticals we serve, visit us at thumbstopper.bssdev.com/retail.

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A Few Steps to Amplifying Your Brand’s Content

A Few Steps to Amplifying Your Brand’s Content

You developed a marketing strategy for your brand and your retailers. You’ve drafted the perfect messages, crafted the right designs to pair, and published your posts across your social outlets.

But what if the content you’ve published isn’t gaining the traction you expected with your target audience or the followers who subscribe to you on social? Fortunately, this happens far more often than you think.

On any given day, there are’s thousands of pieces of content that are vying for your customers’ attention on social media. For many businesses marketing on platforms like Facebook, you will rarely see more than 1% to 2% reach on your digital content at one time.

However, this doesn’t mean that your content can’t cut through the noise. With many individuals turning to social in recent weeks for news consumption and updates, a few adjustments to your marketing strategy can give your content the boost it needs to cast a wider net with your next customer.

Define the Audience You’re Reaching

Before deploying your marketing strategy on social, it’s important to know the audience in which you’re looking to target. A concrete social media strategy is not built overnight and requires in-depth research to identify who your next customer comes from.

To start, identify some key qualities of your current customer base – age range, spending habits, and other demographics. Creating an ideal customer profile for your target market gives you the tools to craft content and advertising efforts tailored to meeting their needs.

Read the Room

In these uncertain times, many individuals have turned to social for updates on how COVID-19 has affected their communities and the businesses they support. As a franchise brand, it’s imperative to create and share content that is relevant to the issues of your demographic while promoting your product or service

By staying on top of issues that matter to your audience and crafting safe, on-brand content, you’ll avoid alienating your customer and ignoring their issues. This in turn will influence your brand’s reputation for the better in the coming months.

Give Your Content a Boost

Unfortunately, hashtags and organic reach alone won’t be the answer to gain traction towards your brand. Luckily, paid advertising is here to give some extra oomph to your social strategy.

Paid media has emerged as an essential component to successful marketing strategies, enabling businesses to promote content beyond their followers based on cost-per-click and other ad spend. With the right content, budget, and call-to-action, your business can successfully boost its content and home in on converting your target audience into leads.

Outro

Once you’ve tailored your marketing strategy, it’s off to work! While it is not assured that your business will immediately see greater reach with your content, the tips above are a good starting point to cast that wider net for your consumers.But if you’re still having some trouble cultivating the right strategy for your business, it always helps to get a pointer from a business that’s helped many brand partners amplify their organic reach over 700%. Drop us a message at the link here and see how we’ve helped brands amplify their social thumbprint across their retail network.

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Your Brand’s Integrity is Key – Maintain It

Your Brand's Integrity is Key – Maintain It

Think of some of the most iconic brands in business right now – Google, Netflix, and Facebook. You can visualize the colors, logos, and services they provide within a matter of minutes; You probably use at least one, if not all three, of these services yourself.

But these brands also deliver a high-quality product with consistent messaging that keep their names in their consumers’ minds. That’s the power of brand integrity at work.

As a brand manager, you are the architect behind the cultivation and management of your brand’s identity. It’s paramount to maintain a consistent, positive image of your brand – it’s services, core values, and philosophy – while telling your story in a unique and authentic matter to stand out from your competitors.

Staying True to Your Customers – And Yourself

Brand integrity can be a foundational piece of a business that’s difficult to manage, but even harder to cultivate. Before your business can ensure trust from your following, you need to have brand integrity established with your following.

This involves understanding the ins-and-outs of your brand and finding what makes your business unique from the competition. Your brand integrity will then involve the creative means of following through with your value propositions and philosophy to convey your story with your followers.

Adapt to Survive

Social media has seen tremendous strides in the past few years as a facilitator for conversation, news aggregator, and e-commerce solution. It is viewed as the ultimate equalizer, empowering brands to tell their story at a fraction of the cost seen in traditional marketing efforts.

It’s never been more vital to leverage social and digital media to bring the eyes of your next customers to your brand. But as we continue to traverse a digital-first environment to market to our next consumers, have a digital presence – or lack thereof – can be a difference-marker from whether your brand thrives or fails.

Previously, the lack of a social presence has already killed off brands like Sears and Toys-R-Us; If your brand isn’t operating on social media, you can be sure that your competition is already taking advantage of its impact on business. Don’t get caught slipping.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

For as many months or years it may take to develop your brand’s image, a few mistakes can ruin its image in the blink of an eye.

For instance, Coca-Cola took one of the biggest risks in its history in April 1985 when the company announced “New Coke,” the first departure from its original formula in 99 years. The shift, first announced as a marketing effort to re-energize the Coke brand, led to a swift marketing firestorm – only 13% of soda drinkers liked the new formula.

In attempting to re-energize its brand, Coca-Cola committed a cardinal rule in switching a long-lasting formula with proven success in the soft drink industry. Nearly three months of criticism later, the company returned to its original formula – “Classic Coke” – that we’re all familiar with.

Brand beware: even the most subtle of changes thought to improve your image can have a devastating impact on your brand’s integrity and reputation.

Your Brand’s Integrity Should Take Precedence

At the end of the day, you’ll want to leave a positive lasting impression on your customers. But remember that branding is a marathon, not a sprint.

By investing in honesty, staying current with how your brand is conveying its message on social, and taking careful steps to be true with your brand, you can ensure your brand is at the top of your followers’ minds.

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Co-op Advertising Techniques to Benefit Brand and Retailers

Co-op Advertising Techniques to Benefit Brand and Retailers
ThumbStopper is the right solution to best utilize co-op funds for brands and retailers

The relationship between manufacturers and retailers is a special one – a symbiotic one in which both parties can benefit each other with the right advertising techniques.

The key? Co-operation.

When we onboard brands to our platform, we recommend they get behind our program by paying a percentage of the cost through cooperative advertising. Co-op advertising is a cost-effective approach for manufacturers and retailers to share the costs to better reach their target markets.

Through these co-op funded programs, we’ve added over 10,000 retailers representing brands across multiple verticals. But for newcomers to the concept, here’s what you need to know:

Co-op Advertising for Beginners

Co-op advertising is a joint advertising effort established between a manufacturer and a retailer. Its purpose is to save both parties’ money by sharing the costs of advertising at the local level.

Co-op ads depend on a partnership between the manufacturer and the retailer. In such a partnership, manufacturers give retailers funds based on the number of products they sell. Retailers benefit from greater brand exposure without the increased ad spend while manufacturer benefit with increased business at a lower cost.

As a manufacturer, it’s up to you how high a percentage to subsidize a retailer’s advertising budget. We recommend a 50/50 split for manufacturers who use co-op funds with our platform, though some may cover 75% or even pay 100% of the advertising cost. Manufacturers can decide on how much to pay based on the previous year’s purchases, a retailer’s current orders, or the like. You are in control of the amount you offer.

As a retailer, you would be remiss not to take advantage of co-op advertising. With free money sponsored by the manufacturer, you can receive a reimbursement of your marketing costs each time you run an advertisement or marketing campaign that features the manufacturer’s wares. With some manufacturers willing to pay 100% of your advertising costs, local advertisers can benefit from the co-op agreement.

Using Co-Op Advertising for Social Media Growth

The co-op theory is simple: The more you spend on advertising, the more exposure your brand receives. Spending money on advertising through a co-op system results in stronger marketing efforts, more branded content across digital channels and more buzz surrounding your products. Using co-op funds on social media advertising is one of the best ways to maximize results.

In a February 2019 Adweek article, Andreas Reiffen outlined the benefits of shifting co-op advertising funds to digital channels – only 20 percent of nearly $70 billion invested in co-op marketing is being used on the digital front ($14 billion). With roughly 75 percent of ad-induced sales coming from paid search and product listing ad (PLA) campaigns, digital co-op marketing is a relatively untapped well that retailers and manufacturers can benefit from.

If your manufacturer offers these funds, make use of them to grow your social media advertising budget and make a greater impact on your audience. Failing to take advantage of co-op ad money is a costly mistake that could result in manufacturers slashing their budgets.

Expanding Your Social Presence

Engaging in a co-op program is an advantageous opportunity that can lower advertising costs and achieve outstanding ROI in your digital marketing campaigns. It’s both easy and practical too:

Get the guidelines. 

Ask your manufacturer for an in-depth description of advertising requirements for your co-op program. Manufacturers will generally require you to be consistent with their branding.

Take to social media. 

Take advantage of digital advertising with co-op funds. Social marketing is an incredible tool for engaging with your audience – 72% of the U.S. is on at least one social platform as of 2019!

Work with an advertising professional. 

Get advice from a professional marketer in creating social ads your consumers will love. Getting help from digital advertising experts can help you make the most of your co-op program.

As a retailer and manufacturer, you should be taking advantage of co-op advertising programs. Put the money toward social and digital media advertising to expand your reach, increase customer engagement and boost website traffic.

Learn more about how brands use co-op programs for social growth through the ThumbStopper platform by clicking here.