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Today’s fast paced electronic world requires that businesses keep a watchful eye on their cross-media marketing strategies. An overwhelming number of marketers consider social media to be integral to their strategies, and 70% plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year, according to a poll from Effie Worldwide and Mashable.

As this number continues to increase, modern businesses must find better ways to incorporate social into their cross-media marketing efforts in order to be competitive. This brings a unique opportunity for print and marketing service providers to offer a value-added service to their existing customers and prospects. Incorporating social into the cross-media campaign landing page is a great way to expand communications about your clients’ products or services.

First Step – Connect your landing page with the Big 3

Luckily, integrating the major social networking sites into a cross-media marketing campaign is not that difficult. World class cross-media solutions allow the marketer to add “share” buttons to their landing pages that connect to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Each of these social media sites records a post in the user’s feed when they share the page. Friends of that person can see the connection, and ideally, will click the link to the landing page, view the details, and supply their information. When this second tier of users shares the landing page, their friends will see the post in the feed as well. This leads to an exponential increase in visibility and the creation of a sizable following through digital word of mouth.

The ability to measure the influence of a social media user as part of a cross-media marketing campaign is one more way of measuring the success of the social landing page strategy. Powerful reporting and analytics are always available for measuring the success of the entire campaign. These include a variety of lead, activity, and source tracking reports, all available in real-time.

Second Step – Build credibility by adding “social proof”

Facebook features an operation that goes beyond visibility to credibility. A “Like” button can be easily added to the landing page during programming. Clicking the button adds the landing page to the user’s profile as one of his “likes.” This information is also added to the user’s feed wall. This is an implicit recommendation of the company’s products or services, based on first-hand knowledge. More importantly, when a friend of that person visits the same page, they’ll see that their friend has liked this page, as well as the total number of people who have liked this page. This builds the concept of “social proof.”

Adding Facebook's "Like" button to your landing page increases its credibility

90% of consumers online trust these types of social recommendations from people they know. Surprisingly, 70% even trust the recommendations of people they don’t know (eConsultancy, 2009).

Third Step – Add a “Send to a friend” link

For direct recommendations that create a referral for the company, users can “Send To A Friend” from the social landing page. This feature allows the user to send the landing page via email. While sharing the landing page or liking it are passive means of spreading word of mouth about the business, sending the landing page to a friend requires thought and action.

Using a "Send To A Friend" link on your landing page can help visitors easily spread your message

This is a powerful recommendation to a person that might be in need of the business’s products or services. These sent messages are a form of referrals to potential leads for the business. As such, their information is captured and collected for a future outreach.

Don’t Underestimate

Marketing service providers cannot afford to underestimate the value of social media as part of a cross-media marketing approach. It allows print and marketing service providers to take advantage of easy to use technology to create socially connected campaigns for their customers that generate more revenue.

For more details on the advantages of integrating social media into your landing pages, and how to employ these techniques, watch our recorded webinar entitled “Taking Your Landing Pages Social.” To register and view, visit: http://mindfireinc.com/resources/webinars/lookwhosclicking-2-25-release-webinar-taking-your-landing-pages-social/.