(From June 6-17, SSI will be highlighting the winners from April’s SAMMY Awards. COP Security won the SAMMY for Best Social Media Campaign.)
COP Security of Alexander, Ark., is a family-owned dealer company that has been serving its surrounding communities for nearly two decades. For the past six years, the company has increasingly leveraged social media to extend its brand and currently uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.
“We share the social media [duties] within the company between four of us to include owners, business development manager and our marketing person,” says COP Security President & CEO James Ward.
The company’s principal strategy across the various platforms is mostly consistent: to promote new technology, existing technology, relevant crime news and statistics, customer testimonials and compliments, jobsite photos, promotions, company information and sometimes just funny content.
“We do track metrics. We look at the Facebook analytics and our Web site traffic reports. For instance, we know that Facebook generates the most traffic to our Web site when it comes to social media,” Ward says.
Every prospect the company visits for a sales appointment is handed a survey, which includes questions to determine how they found COP Security. Prospects are also asked where they get information, such as the news channels they watch, what radio stations they listen to, what Internet sites and social sites they visit regularly, plus how often and what times of day.
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Leads provide a second pillar to COP’s social media pursuits. It’s about staying visible, relevant and ultimately converting followers to sales leads. The company has been successful in growing its social media traffic by not only promoting from the social sites themselves, but also from copsecuritysystems.com, all E-mail correspondence, vehicle wraps, billboards, school banners and TV commercials. The company even uses its paper invoices to ask existing customers to connect with them.
The demographic make-up of COP Security’s social media followers has not been without some degree of revelation.
“It amazes me how many of our 70-plus-year-old customers who have smartphones and are connecting themselves to social media, mainly Facebook. The younger crowds are on Instagram and Snapchat; however, we’ve yet to Snapchat with anyone,” Ward says. “We still try and promote ourselves to the younger crowds on Instagram.”
