Information in this blog post was obtained from the Social Pros Podcast. Listen to the full episode here.
When seeking to grow your social media strategy, it’s always a good idea to look to the pros. Sam’s Club isn’t a brand most would think is a social media superstar, but their growth speaks for itself. In just two years, Sam’s Club has grown their social media team from 2 to 50 people. Needless to say, social media is now an integral part of the retail giant’s marketing strategy. In a recent episode of the Social Pros Podcast, MacKenzie McCarver and Hunter Wuensche from Sam’s Club’s social media team discussed some of the ways Sam’s Club has achieved success through social media in recent years. This article provides 3 takeaways from the discussion that you can implement in your own social strategy right away.
Insights from the Podcast
Don’t have time to listen to the whole podcast? No worries, we did it for you! Below are the most important insights derived from Sam’s Club’s social media strategy discussed in this episode of the Social Pros Podcast.
Target mentalities, not demographics
When determining who to target with any marketing initiative, most people start with demographics. They’re relatively easy to find and use to get a sense of who your target audience is. While they may be good for getting a general idea of who your audience is, they don’t give you all the information you need to know to target effectively. Instead of focusing on age, gender and other demographics Sam’s Club focuses more on psychographics, or what they refer to as “mentalities”. This helps to gain a better understanding of your target audience by evaluating not only their demographic characteristics but also their attitudes and behaviors. The example used in the podcast is Sam’s “Happy Host” segment, which includes the behavior and mentality of a customer who is looking to gather everything he or she needs to host the best dinner party, girls-night-in, etc. By doing this Sam’s Club is better able to put themselves in their customers’ shoes and better predict how their audience is going to react to certain messages, and in turn better be able to serve their customers.
Influencers come in all shapes and sizes
When it comes to influencer marketing many instantly think of big-name celebrities like Matthew McConaughey driving a luxury sedan in a Lincoln commercial, which instantly makes influencer marketing seem unattainable. While Sam’s Club likely has a larger than average marketing budget, they are a great example of how influencers with varying audience sizes can be effective. Sam’s influencer marketing strategy involves using influencers with large audiences as well as “nano-influencers” that have a relatively smaller audience. “Nano-influencers typically have a stronger hold on a local audience” according to Hunter Wuensche, a social media manager at Sam’s Club. Since nano-influencers have smaller audiences, they also tend to be much cheaper than those with larger audiences, and since these nano-influencers can still be effective for a local audience it is clear why Sam’s Club has adopted a two-pronged approach to influencer marketing.
Content shouldn’t always come from the social team
Coming up with good content ideas for social media can be one of the most daunting aspects of social media marketing. The good news is it doesn’t always have to come directly from the marketing team. Marketers often utilize UGC, or user-generated content to generate content ideas and insights from their audience, like how Lego gets new Lego set ideas directly from their audience via UGC. Sam’s Club takes UGC even further by utilizing employee-generated content, which is a significant part of their social strategy.
Associates from local Sam’s Club stores are encouraged to create content for social media, which allows the individual stores to tailor marketing efforts to a local audience while providing the brand’s social team with highly engaging UGC. In the podcast they mention doing this through an app called My Local Social, which serves as a content management platform for associates to post on social media.
As you may have guessed doing this on a large scale can be tricky. It can be challenging to get other employees engaged in social media because they still have to worry about their own duties. Sam’s Club didn’t know what to expect when launching the EGC program, but it took off thanks to some friendly competition. By using the My Local Social app, local clubs could see how their posts were performing compared to other local clubs through a leaderboard. This led to the clubs getting excited to post on social media to try to get their posts to perform better than other clubs.
Another issue Sam’s Club faced with their EGC program was making sure associates don’t post anything that could potentially harm the brand or their local clubs. Every social media marketer knows that brands can face huge backlash from just a single post, and the majority of associates aren’t trained on the subject like the social media team is. Local clubs are protected from potential harm through an approval process that is more robust than for even other UGC posts. The social media team works closely with the HR, Legal and Operations departments to make sure that posts aren’t likely to generate backlash and will set the clubs up for success, not failure.
Learn from Sam’s Success
Sam’s Club can serve as a model for any social media team. They have achieved rapid success by taking standard marketing practices and innovating and adapting them to achieve success on social media in ways that other brands aren’t. These are only a few facets of the social media marketing strategy that Sam’s Club employs, and you can find the rest on the Social Pros Podcast’s deep dive on Sam’s Club.
Want more practical content like this tailored for newbies and pros alike? Check out more insightful social media marketing content available at The SMMU blog!
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