BACKGROUND
Please describe your company and your role there.
Sachs Marketing Group is a digital marketing firm specializing in SEO and SEM.
What is your position?
I am an SEO specialist.
OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE
What business challenge were you trying to address with Buffer?
We like Buffer because it centralizes how we approach a campaign. It’s packed with a lot of functionality, which is pretty helpful between the optimal timing tool, time zone optimization, and all the analytics you can dig into. Our goal for our clients is to help them reach success online, especially in terms of extending their online reach. We find that Buffer provides us with the tools we need to track progress and develop growth for their brand online.
SOLUTION
How does your company implement this platform or software?
It depends on the client. For example, if it’s a local business, we sync their social channels and optimize the time zones. What’s nice about Buffer is that you can switch up the time zone, which ensures that your posts are shared at the optimal time. If it was all just one time zone or if you were just doing it from your specific time zone, but you have a client across the country, that could be a big mistake. Then you won’t be reaching their local customers when they’re most active.
That’s one thing that we’ll do, optimize the timing and also the frequency using the scheduling feature with Buffer. It allows you to set up how often you want to post during the day, the time zones, and you can even set up multiple, weekly schedules. As we develop content, we’ll add the content into Buffer and schedule it. Then from that point, it’s just about continuing to develop content and then tracking the analytics and optimizing what’s contributing to the overall reach. What’s nice about it is that you can jump into the analytics and see what’s most popular, what people are re-tweeting, liking, or replying to. You can even look into less popular content and try and take a second approach, not quite like A/B testing, but just revising a headline and scheduling it again, seeing if you can reach more people the second time around.
Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?
We’ve been using Buffer for a long time. One of the biggest things about Buffer is their transparency. They’re an industry leader in digital marketing. They have a super popular blog, and they’re very transparent about not only their company, but how their tool works. It may not offer some of the functionalities that Hootsuite, or the other competitors, offer like having dozens of social channels you can connect to or tracking overall content, not just the content you share within Buffer. Still, it’s been fundamental in how we’ve developed success for our clients.
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
Going back to testing headlines, there’s one, for example – one of our clients is in the pest control industry. We test a lot of different content. There’s one tweet in particular that I’d been testing, and it seemed like it had potential. It would have a few clicks in there. By testing different headlines, I’ve seen some pretty interesting ups and downs.
I noticed that the last version that I ran received five re-tweets and the reach totaled out at 92,000 people. When I first started testing this, it didn’t really have that much reach, but it did have potential. For a local pest control company, that’s reaching 92,000 people, it may not result in a lot of business, but we’ve been hearing good things from the client. It contributes to the online brand awareness and development.
FEATURES
Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?
Buffer offers an optimal timing tool. That would be the main thing that sets them apart from others.
It’s not too often you find the level of transparency that Buffer offers. It develops a lot of trust, and we know that we are in good hands. The team behind the tools are very transparent about their development as a company, their tools, and even their struggles. If you read the blog, it’s very inspiring.
Looking back, are there any areas of the software upon which you feel could be added or improved?
The only thing would be the number of social channels you can connect. It does allow you to connect to the most popular channels, but it is limited compared to some of the others. I would say one feature I’d really like to see is an area where you can create evergreen content for your marketing efforts. There are certain things that you talk about regularly. It would be helpful if you could create a stream of content that would actually save within Buffer, which you could include into your stream. At this point, you have to add it manually. When it’s the same message you want to send out there, it would just be a little more efficient.
Have you had to interact with the platform’s support team or reference their support resources?
Their support team is awesome. It feels like they have a huge team over there, and they’re all on the same page, and are very generous. I haven’t run into any problems in regard to lack of response or problems going unresolved. I was very happy about that.
RATINGS
We ask that you rate the software on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best score.
What would you give the software for functionality of the features available?
5
What would you give the software for ease of use of implementation into your business?
5
For support, as in responsiveness of the team or helpfulness of the resources available?
5 - They’re very responsive.
For overall satisfaction with the platform?
5
How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?
5