Social Media Advertising Proposal

QUESTION

Proposal

Use the RFP (Request for Proposal) I uploaded. Assume that your organization (feel free to create an organization if you would like) has passed the initial stage and has been invited to submit a formal proposal to The Greater Peoria Mass Transit District (GPMTD). Write a three-page (maximum 1500 words) brief proposal to persuade the reader to accept your idea. Follow the format presented below no matter what the real RFP guidelines stipulate. Append to the beginning of your proposal the actual RFP (if the RFP is multiple pages, include just the introduction and instruction page) and upload as one document. Be sure to use compelling and persuasive language, practice economy of words and incorporate visuals, tables or charts to add value.

Executive Summary: provide a cogent, specific synthesis of the purpose for the proposal, succinctly highlighting key analyses and benefits
Problem/Opportunity: frame the situation in terms of benefits and/or consequences of inaction
Solution/Rationale: explain your proposed outcome and why it will work; use examples from Made to Stick (e.g., Six Principles, Commander’s Intent, Curse of Knowledge) and other course material to support your approach
Cost Analysis/ROI: identify cost, resources, and expected quantitative and/or qualitative return on investment
Assessment/Schedule: describe how the effectiveness will be evaluated immediately and over time
Call to Action: include a clear, compelling and complete conclusion to galvanize your reader
Appendix: add necessary and appropriate exhibits

Qualities of an Effective Proposal

•Concise
•Complete
•Cogent

7 Guidelines for Writing a Proposal

Problem solving activity
2. Regard audience as skeptical
Research thoroughly
4. Scout out competitors
5. Prove it is workable
6. Financially realistic
7. Package attractively

ANSWER

Proposal for Provision of Social Media Advertising Management Services

Executive Summary

INTEL is committed to optimizing revenue growth and exceeding our client’s expectations by providing effective social marketing services. This proposal’s goal is to provide an innovative solution for the management of GPMTD’s advertising campaigns. Traditional content management roles are no longer a source of competitive advantage. Additionally, social media engagement is getting more difficult due to intense industry competition and the internet being flooded with massive amounts of data. These challenges call for an approach that will make your company stand out against its competitors: one that will help you connect and build relationships with your target customers. Instead of focusing on platform and content management, we will focus on engaging your customers in co-creating product/service value by getting them to participate in knowledge sharing, service specifications, quality control, etc., during the Ad campaign. Our company has the expertise and tools to make this happen, and GPMTD only needs to pay for the expertise. We believe your company will benefit greatly from our services, given the lifetime value of the campaign’s intangible outcomes and the estimated ROI of 3:1.

Problem

Many transportation agencies and companies have embraced social media for engagement, brand building, entertainment, and information dissemination. Consequently, roles such as platform monitoring, managing digital content (e.g., campaigns), responding to customers, and creating and sharing content have become standard practices, meaning they are longer a source of competitive advantage. As competition intensifies, algorithmic curation and de-prioritization on social media, tactics that filter out content from users’ feeds, will make reach and engagement more difficult. Thus, companies must strive to differentiate themselves from their competitors to maintain a strong social media presence and win customers. Our company offers innovative, evidence-based solutions that will make Greater Peoria Mass Transit District (GPMTD) distinct from its competitors, giving them a competitive edge.

Solution

Historically, companies and customers had separate roles in product/service development and consumption. Companies made the products/services while customers consumed them. However, innovation literature now indicates that value co-creation between companies and consumers can be a source of competitive advantage (Ulloa et al., 2016). Because customer opinions are of substantial value, companies can use their feedback to create customer-centric services. Our company proposes using your social media advertising plan to access digital behavioral data and get your customers to participate in the company’s service development.

We will use an architecture pipeline to extract users’ opinions on previously-defined heuristics from various platforms to achieve this goal. The defined heuristics may be one of the options: search terms, users’ pool (data posted by a specific user), and Geo reference (all geolocalized data). Next, we will create a database to store and process the gathered information via natural language processing capabilities. Once we have gathered relevant data to be researched, we will perform sentiment analysis and present the findings to relevant stakeholders.

We are equipped with the tools required to perform these processes. For example, we’ve used POPmine, an open-source system, to help various clients extract and analyze web-based texts from platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. POPmine is adept in opinion mining, information extraction, processing text-based information, and generating indicators of measurement of frequencies (Ulloa et al., 2016). With the information obtained from the content analyses, your company can make interesting discoveries and improve your understanding of various phenomena. Your company can integrate the feedback from the content analyses into the service development process, which, ultimately, will help connect and build relationships with their customers. We will summarize and provide weekly and monthly analytics reports, e.g., reach, engagement and Ads running, and go over the results with designated staff to tweak our advertising strategy accordingly. We believe this approach will help GPMTD improve its service delivery and customize services to meet specific customer preferences.

Return on Investment

The project requires skilled staff, creative design/graphic design costs, competitive analysis tools, social media analytics tools, and social media management tools, e.g., Hoot suite. Our company is already equipped with these tools, and GPMTD does not need to pay additional charges for them. It will only pay for its staff expertise in managing the paid Ads, analytics, etc. The total monthly cost for this project is $54 500. The following table shows a breakdown of the total cost of investment.

We estimate that the ROI will be ratio 3:1. The total ROI must consider quantitative (monetary value, leads & sales generated) and qualitative outcomes, e.g. customer lifetime value (CLV), value of brand recognition and awareness (Gilfoil & Jobs, 2012). See Appendix 1 for ROI measures per unit of analysis.

Assessments/Schedule

We shall generate weekly and monthly reports of the campaign’s effectiveness. The weekly reports will focus on reach and engagement, while the monthly reports will focus on the campaign’s overall impact relative to its objectives. The above assessments will be done periodically throughout the campaign’s lifecycle.

Weekly reports will entail the following:

We will derive the feedback data from Facebook Analytics, which generates data in seven areas:

Figure 1: Facebook Insight Data

The overview tab generates the total number of likes, post reach, and engagements the page generated within seven days. This tab also contains the “Pages to Watch” option that allows users to monitor likes, engagement, and the number of weekly posts for each competitor added to the list. This information will be critical in determining our performance relative to competitors. The “Likes Tab” generates a chart displaying growth or decline of page likes over a specified period. The chart also displays the number of net likes (total new likes minus page unlikes), the information we can use to determine the overall impact of the campaign initiative. We will use data from the Likes tab to:

Determine which posts/strategies cause a spike in likes. This information will help determine posts’ effectiveness and the type of content the brand community appreciates.
Determine which topics or content caused people to leave the community. This information will help us identify what to avoid in the campaigns.

The following table summarizes performance metrics on different social networking platforms. These metrics measure exposure and brand awareness: (Appendix 2 explains the rationale for each metric category.

Site	Performance Metrics	Engagement Metrics
Blogs	· Number of unique visits · Number of · Search ranking · Number of times the post is bookmarked	· Number of RSS-feed subscribers · Average length of time on the blog post · Number of responses (replies, comments, etc) · Number of followers · Number of influencers engaging with content
Twitter	· Number of tweets about (GPMTD) services · Number of followers	· Number of Replies, retweets, and likes · Number of mentions · Number of topic trends · Number of influencers engaging with content
Facebook/Instagram/Linkedin	· Number of impressions · Reviews/ratings · Number of install of applications (company App)	· Number of likes, repost & shares · Rate of activity · Impressions-to-interaction ration · Number of user-generated items (users’ replies) · Number of responses to a referral invite · Frequency of appearance on timeline · Number of topic trends

Metrics to measure engagement include:

Figure 2: Measuring engagement

Monthly assessments will include:

Advertising Metrics

Because this is a paid advert, it is also important to evaluate the effectiveness of the paid placements. Social media platforms offer various advertising pricing bundles, including Cost per click (CPC), Cost per view (CPV), Cost per impression (CPM), and Cost per action (CPA) (Kim, 2016). Whichever bundle your organization chooses, we shall help you generate relevant metrics and determine the effectiveness of the paid placement, the value of followers gained through the ad efforts, and the contribution of the payments to the campaign’s objective.

Evaluating the Impact of the Paid Advertisement.

It is not uncommon for companies to use exposure, reach, and engagement data as success indicators. Kim (2016) reveals that many companies erroneously think their campaigns are successful just because they acquired thousands of likes and followers. However, reach, and engagement metrics cannot be used to claim success because they are often not KPIs for the campaign’s objective. Therefore, we must review the campaign’s SMART goals and outcome-based objectives to determine whether or not we accomplished these objectives. Metrics measuring social media campaigns generally fall into four categories (Kim, 2016):

Sales metrics which measure the revenue earned from the campaign efforts
Lead-generation metrics indicate the number of people who have expressed interest in purchasing services.
Share metrics such as share buttons and retweets measure exposure and brand awareness.
Consumption metrics that measure engagement.

If generating brand awareness is the main focus of the campaign, then sharing and consumption metrics will be used to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. Lead generation and sales metrics are often used when the campaign’s focus is financially-related.

Call to Action

In today’s competitive environment, businesses must strive to be different. Continuous product/service innovation can help companies draw sales and market share from competitors with weak innovative competencies (Thompson, 2018). Our company offers GPMTD an innovative solution entailing extracting user opinion and analyzing sentiments to acquire relevant information about service reception. GPMTD can use this information in its service development process, giving them a competitive advantage over its rivals. Engaging your customers in their service development process will certainly lead to developing a service unique to your customer’s preferences. Be different by choosing us!

References

Gilfoil, D. M., & Jobs, C. (2012). Return on investment for social media: A proposed framework for understanding, implementing, and measuring the return. Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER), 10(11), 637-650. https://clutejournals.com/index.php/JBER/article/download/7363/7431

Kim, C. M. (2016). Social media campaigns: Strategies for public relations and marketing. Routledge. https://www.academia.edu/download/60766001/Social_Media_Campaigns20191001-8906-1y3fviz.pdf

Thompson, A. A. (2018). Strategy: Core concepts and analytical approaches. Burr Ridge, Illinois: McGraw-Hill Inc.

Ulloa, D., Saleiro, P., Rossetti, R. J., & Silva, E. R. (2016, November). Mining social media for open innovation in transportation systems. In 2016 IEEE 19th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC) (pp. 169-174). https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.09894

Appendix 1

Social Media Advertising ROI Measures by Unit of Analysis

Appendix 2