6 Phases to Social Amplification Engine
Maximize what’s already working in your business to increase conversion rates on existing
traffic and find more ideal customers. This approach is not for brand new products or
businesses that don’t have an existing funnel—it’s designed to amplify proven success.
For students at Johns Hopkins University, this means applying the six-phase SAE process to
help a local service business improve its digital marketing effectiveness.
- PLUMBING
In Digital Plumbing, you build audiences and track results. Digital Plumbing ensures that
audiences are properly tracked and campaigns are measurable. With reliable analytics,
we can determine where an extra effort or dollar in ad spend can drive the greatest
impact.
For student projects, this includes:
● Setting up Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Facebook Pixel.
● Ensuring website visitors can be tracked and retargeted.
● Configuring conversion tracking to measure real results (e.g., bookings, calls,
purchases). - GOALS
Goals serve as both the metrics and mission of a business.
Metrics are the numerically driven targets – cost per lead, ROI, revenue, traffic, and so
forth.
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Mission must be authentically defined in the WHY of a brand – authentic statements
that drive content that converts at each stage of the funnel.
These values drive content sequences that effectively drive traffic and conversion.
For local businesses, goals might include:
✔ Increasing local brand awareness through social media engagement.
✔ Driving appointment bookings or lead form submissions.
✔ Generating repeat customers via email and retargeting ads. - CONTENT
Content is directly tied to these funnel metrics and audience segments: posts to boost to
drive ticket/merchandise sales, sponsored content to drive partner activations, videos to
drive database growth, and so forth.
Aligning content to each stage of the funnel:
○ Awareness: “WHY” videos and brand storytelling.
○ Consideration: Product/service demos, educational pieces.
○ Conversion: Direct offers, promotions, and calls to action. - TARGETING
The most effective marketing campaigns don’t just reach more people—they reach the
right people.
Target your content to multiple owned audiences (Facebook remarketing, Google
remarketing, email remarketing, app remarketing, tie-ins with your CRM) and core
audiences (lookalike audiences for each conversion type, media/influencer targets,
related interest targets).
A strong targeting strategy is only possible if Digital Plumbing is correctly set up.
Because correctly done Digital Plumbing is key to being able to create these audiences
and create cross-channel campaigns.
Examples:
● people who’ve been to your site but haven’t bought
● who are followers but you don’t have an email
● have bought last year but not this year
● are in your email list, but haven’t been to the site and so forth.
Check out these other examples of funnel sequences. - AMPLIFICATION
Once the triad of Goals, Content, and Targeting is in place, it’s time to amplify by
running ads:
● Amplify the most important pieces of content that will attract the most relevant
people and drive engagement
● Intensify promotional efforts to the engaged crowd for conversions
● Place brand content in the News Feeds of influencers to incept the media
● Use Dollar A Day strategy to test what works before scaling - OPTIMIZATION
Digital marketing success comes from constant iteration. Optimization ensures that
campaigns continue improving over time by:
● Using analytics to determine where to put your additional effort or dollar in ad spend.
● Expanding on working audiences.
● Tweak bidding and creatives where necessary.
● Reallocate budgets and measure your performance in terms of your content and targeting
against your goals to define success.
● Applying the Metrics, Analysis, Action (MAA) framework to every campaign.
For student projects, this means:
✔ Running at least two optimization cycles to refine audience targeting.
✔ Tracking ad performance and adjusting based on data.
✔ Reporting insights in a structured format to show measurable business impact.