CXL - Act like a human (+500% followers)

If you want to win on social media, start by speaking like a human. Ron Barceló did it and grew their followers by 500%. We're telling you how.

Our SEO Testing course is launching today, and we also bring you some exciting news regarding CXL Live 2023.

TODAY'S HOST

Mariele Sánchez-Palencia, Content Strategist @ Socialmood

At Socialmood, a Spanish creative agency, we changed Ron Barcelo's social game by speaking like humans, growing to 176K followers and 55M views.

They're called social networks because they're places where people socialize and interact with others.

That's usually not the case when brands act like brands.

If a rum company is positioning itself with "Vive Ahora" (Live Now) messaging, it needs to be alive on social media.

That's why we turned it into an integral part of the community. The brand became a person, and its social media profiles became those of Roni, the Community Manager.

To do this, we had to source someone who could actually represent Roni and connect with our audience and every trend that could appear down the road.

We launched a ‘Looking for Roni’ public hiring process. After 4,723 applications, we found a candidate who was a brand enthusiast, in tune with the audience insights, and eager to make the most out of our brand-organized experience.

Enter Roni. The brand now behaves like a person, and communicates in a radically different way from our competitors.

To achieve this communication, we use no guidelines (yes, you read that right). Tone and voice are just aligned with Roni’s authentic personality. If a customer or brand reaches out, Roni will reply just like he would do to any friend.

For the sake of content creation, Roni has hit the streets to take on challenges with ‘Barcelovers’ (our followers), thrown parties with them, built relationships with the brand’s influencers by becoming one of them, and even learnt how to ride a jet ski.

What has happened since then:

+130K followers on TikTok and 55M views in just one year, with our highest-performing video hitting 7.4M views.
+500% IG followers, reaching 176K and with 70+ videos surpassing 100K views.
We now rank in the top 5 brands with the highest social interactions in Spain (for 4 years now).

Launching this strategy has propelled us to become the top 1 brand in market share after three years. This wasn’t all Roni’s credit, or mine, but rather an agency team working behind the ideation process for several years.

Each channel has its own nature, and understanding it is the first step towards effective communication.

For us, this meant changing what “success” means: walking away from the illusion of interaction that likes represent, and embracing true connection.

It meant engaging in conversation with the community.

Connect with Mariele on LinkedIn.

Unlock the next growth lever: SEO Testing course

Our newest course is here, and it will help you run SEO experiments that deliver results in weeks, not months.

You'll join forces with Logan Bryant to unlock the freshest SEO tactics and turn knowledge into action with our exclusive testing dashboard.

Let's fix that stagnant traffic and double that growth rate.

Check out the course here.

CXL Live 2023: Call for speakers

We're excited to announce that CXL Live 2023 (Oct 16-17, Austin, TX) has just opened speaker submissions.

If you're a data scientist, conversion optimization or experimentation practitioner, or a growth marketer focused on experimentation, submit your talk proposal.

Deadline: June 25, 2023.

Submit your proposal here.

How to claim that top of mind: brand awareness

You can't force that group of buyers that's not in the market into a buying position.
Not even by spamming them with nurture sequences.

What you can do is invest in building brand awareness so that you become the only obvious choice when prospects are ready to buy.

Read the entire article.

Customer Stories: Scaling from 8 to 130 employees in just three years

Here's how a telehealth company scaled its workforce by 1500% in just three years, growing to own 30% of its market share with the shift to telemedicine during the pandemic.

CXL was also a key support for this growth.

Read the Doxy.me story here.

Unpopular opinion: Join the conversation

A brand winning thanks to social interaction is the ultimate example of being part of the conversation.

We're tired of hearing that in 2023 your main KPI as a marketer should be marketing-sourced revenue.

What we don't hear enough is that most marketing efforts go to a tiny fraction in the funnel – usually not the hidden channels where opinions about brands are formed.

The 5% of the market that's ready to buy (as B2B Institute says) gets targeted the most.

The other 95% still doesn't have a 'top of mind' option, but it isn't addressed nearly enough.

That Slack community, that Facebook group, that direct message? That's where most of your buyers are right now.

Most brands care too little about what's below the surface because it's harder to track than the tip of the iceberg: email marketing, paid social, CTR…

Those conversations don't offer the luxury of attribution.

It takes some bravery to jump in and speak about what they care about, but it also gives you a chance to get ahead of brands missing the point.

Conversations are also people driven. You can't win a community acting like a brand. It's the face of industry experts that builds awareness: Noah Kagan, Rand Fishkin, or our very own Peep.

Cultivate an identity for your brand and put a face on it. Get in front of your audience and speak about what they genuinely care about. People will then pay attention.

If you want to be top of mind, join your customers' conversations. Let them shape your marketing.

Connect with Pablo on LinkedIn.