Social media marketing is a powerful way to spread the word about your business. It can help you reach new customers and create loyal fans for your brand.
If that’s not enough incentive, social media campaigns are also proven to drive leads or sales for businesses!
Just as a detective would examine the evidence to create a suspect, so too can social media data help us understand who our customers are and what they want. With this knowledge in hand, we then have an opportunity to tailor content with their needs at heart such that it will be well received by them.
So how do you go about gathering all of these insights for each of the social media platforms?
It starts by creating audience personas that can reveal details like age range or country of origin among other things depending on where your target market is located geographically.
You may even uncover some small nuances within demographics that show new opportunities for growth!
Once you know more about your customer base – from their interests down to hobbies-tailoring posts becomes easier because now instead of shooting blindly into the dark you have insight into where your customers hang out online and what they want to buy.
How effective is social media marketing?
As a Digital Agency, we have many tools and strategies that help our clients convert leads to customers.
From web design through conversion rate optimization, we build strategic plans for your business to generate revenue from campaigns you run on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter which in turn helps establish the right target audience so everything is structured towards success for your company!
How do Beginners start social media marketing?
- First up you need a website – Customers need direction and when you post something online the ultimate goal is to drive these customers back to your website.
- Call to action – You need to tell customers what to do. It might seem odd we say this, but in reality, a well-thought-out call to action on your page will tell people what they should do next. It may be a click-to-call or fill in a form, but you need to tell them.
- Targeting – With the leading social media platforms you can build out custom audiences to target the right people. Facebook ads are a great example of this. Tell the platform who you want to target and they will build a custom audience for you to target – greatly reducing waste on your ad spend.
- Brand image – You can control this with the right marketing strategy applied to each of the online platforms. Everything from a Facebook status update or a news item on your Facebook page, to an image upload or the smart use of Pinterest ads can be fully controlled by you with the ultimate goal of protecting your brand and image online.
- Social media analytics – This should be core to your marketing strategy because you can quickly identify the success of each piece of content you publish and check if you are reaching unique users with your content.
- Reach people on the go – With over 90% of all social traffic happening on mobile phones your company’s products are right in front of your customers, letting them stay up to date with all your latest news and great products.
- Find the money – Baby boomers are the biggest spenders online and most of them hang out on Facebook. Even having the ability to target this group is perfect for your social media marketing strategy. The only caveat is you need to watch your content formats when you target them – forget about using slang for a start…
- Different formats for each of the social media sites – Most social media platforms have step-by-step guides on how to use them, but most users ignore these. Familiarise yourself with image sizes, length of content that works best and if we were to give you one pro tip – use the analytics to make sure it’s working.
Having a social media presence should form a core part of your marketing strategy. Setting up an account on a social media platform takes only a few clicks – so at the very least, do this, and protect your brand.
It’s more than just a post.
Social media marketing, or SMM, is the term for using networks like Facebook and Twitter to promote your company in an engaging way that gets people talking about you!
Let’s look at a few quick examples of how this works:
- Post an update to one of the social media platforms with an engaging image, some on-point content, and a link back to your website. The idea behind this is that when somebody views this content on social they will click the link and head over to your site.
- A fitness expert posts a YouTube video going through one of their workouts. If the content is good enough they gain a subscriber to their channel. If the message resonates with the viewer, they may gain a new customer.
- A Startup using social media posts to show the benefits of their super cool new software and how it can help customers on a daily basis. If the content and message are right and they target their ideal customers they should generate sales for their efforts.
- A makeup artist using makeup tutorials or something like Instagram stories to showcase their unique skills. They can use these to sell both products and services.
Having a social media marketing strategy and an understanding of your target audience early on in your journey is key to success. Most social networking sites have some sort of advertising platform that lets you build out Ads to show to your target audience.
Each of the social media channels has its own strategy so do your research – check out your competitor’s social presence and see how they are engaging with their customers. Take some of the things you liked about their process and try it for your own business.
You can also take advantage of paid advertising on these platforms which helps you achieve specific goals such as boosting awareness among potential consumers interested in services like yours.
Social media marketing can be a powerful tool for business owners to reach potential customers and generate sales. But without goal-oriented strategies in place, it’s like wandering around a strange city without directions—you’ll probably end up lost!
Before you dive into creating social media campaigns, answer some basic questions about your company:
What are your goals?
Every decision you make in your business should get you one step closer to achieving one of your goals. Your social media strategy should align very closely with these goals.
Posting the right content on the right social media platform should help either increase brand awareness or generate leads.
Is your goal to generate organic leads via the content you produce on each of the social channels or have you focussed on a single social network because research into audience demographics dictates that ad campaigns with bespoke targeted ads will drive significant traffic to your online business with enough of a return to make it profitable?
Are you trying to sell directly via social media posts or is the plan to drive people back via website traffic to a landing page or product page on your own site.
What are other businesses in your market doing?
Can you identify their social strategy from what you see in the public domain?
If you were to examine some of their Facebook ads could you pick out relevant keywords or figure out who they are targeting and mirror that for a quick win.
Who is your target audience?
You know those television commercials that you see and they have a catchy jingle for the product?
Well, with well-executed social media marketing, it’s like your customers are getting their own personal advertisements.
The trick is to get them hooked on what’s being advertised because when it comes time to make a purchase decision (which should be pretty soon) they will remember who gave them all of this great content in order to convince themselves why you’re worth purchasing from!
Understanding your target audience is one of the main pillars of a successful social media strategy.
It can be hard enough to figure out how best to present yourself online without then having to figure out who you want as clients or potential buyers.
If you don’t take the time to get your target audience right from the outset then a post to social media, a blog post on your website, or even a piece of broadcast content may be wasted because the wrong people are seeing it – or nobody is seeing it at all.
Where would they hang out online? You really need to understand where your customers are and what makes them take action.
With over 90% of all social media traffic coming in via mobile, platforms like TikTok are driving phenomenal leads and business for brands that are getting their targeting right.
Consumer behavior changes like the tides and when something new like TikTok comes along you need to seriously look and figure out if you can use the platform to drive traffic to your business.
Don’t be too concerned about whether having an active presence on one of the new platforms will work for your brand image.
Do your homework and see what the big players in your market are up to – and what traction they are getting.
Create engaging content tailored for the right demographic on a newer platform can get you ahead of everybody.
Push boundaries where possible to get people to engage and when creating content, think about your business goals, and how you can use existing marketing content but tune the messaging to suit this new audience.
- What message do you want them to hear from these platforms’ posts or advertisements?
Social Media Strategy
The best social media networks for your business depend on what you’re selling.
An e-commerce or travel company, being highly visual in nature can get a lot of value from strengthening its presence on Instagram and Pinterest.
A B2B or marketing company might find more leverage with Twitter and Linkedin respectively to help them grow as they scale the corporate ladder together!
For example, an e-commerce or travel business that relies heavily upon visuals may be able to benefit greatly by seeking out strong presences within platforms like Instagram and Pinterest while simultaneously also exploring channels such as LinkedIn which primarily focus on online networking between professionals.
Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media marketing can help with a number of goals.
With more than 2 billion people using social sites, it is extremely important for any company to have an online presence and connect with new customers or potential clients across the world!
This article explores some key ways that companies use their social media profiles in order to achieve these common business objectives.
Increasing website traffic
Social networks are now one of the primary channels through which consumers research products before making purchases.
By developing strong content on your profile, you’ll be able to create buzz around what’s happening at your organization so as many users see this information (and maybe share it) whenever they’re scrolling past updates from friends and brands alike—hopefully leading them back to visit YOUR page.
We also have Search Engine Optimisation services if you want to drive even more traffic back to your website.
Conversions & Sales
With the right strategy in place, social media can be a treasure trove of customers.
When you publish your content with the intent behind it and set goals for each piece, there’s no telling how many people will visit to learn more about what you’re selling or sharing!
You might think that converting visitors into shoppers on Facebook is an impossible feat if they haven’t yet converted at all.
But when we get creative – setting specific goal-oriented targets based on our marketing plan – suddenly this becomes much easier than ever before!
With different kinds of posts published at strategically appropriate times throughout the day (and week!), and a thoughtful focus on getting those clicks where they need to go, social media has become a new frontier for capturing potential consumers who are looking for products and services like yours.
Brand Awareness on Social Media Platforms
“If you build it, they will come,” right?
This is often the motto of business owners who have trouble attracting customers.
But this isn’t a problem for most businesses in today’s world – there are too many distractions vying for their attention and money!
For example, your customer may be more interested in an Instagram post from one of her friends than she is about what you’re selling on Facebook.
One way to fight back against these difficulties: launch strategic campaigns that start with efforts meant not to immediately sell but instead tell a story or create memorabilia related to your brand.
Brand awareness should always be a key part of every social media marketing plan.
Building your brand is one of the most important marketing strategies to keep in mind.
Companies invest a lot into building their brands and increasing awareness for them, but what exactly does “brand” refer to?
In essence, branding refers specifically to how people feel about your company or product before they’ve ever even used it!
This means that you need top-notch advertising campaigns as well as quality products if you want customers driving down the road seeing those logos on business storefronts with positive feelings towards them without being approached by salesmen first.
Brand Awareness describes an ability individuals have when identifying familiar aspects of businesses such as slogans and lgos which can then lead individual’s feeling positively toward said companies thus creating strong brand recognition.
The Data Behind Social
Another key part of all of this is understanding the data behind your accounts. Social media followers analytics and social media listening, coupled with competitive analysis are perfect for allowing users to measure performance at every stage of the sales cycle.
Each of the social media channels has some form of analytics so get stuck in and see what your audience is up to when you post something new.
There are also an array of tools that will help you examine your competitors’ social presence to see what they are up to
Are you getting the engagement you feel your content deserves?
If the goal of your posts is to drive leads back to your website then use something like Google Analytics (FREE) to examine inbound traffic to your website and see how much is coming in via the various social media platforms.
Use something like social listening to see what your customers are up to online.
You can monitor for brand mentions or use specific keywords to identify who is talking about your brand, products, or services.
If your data reveals questions or requests for help on any of your products then create content to answer those questions and send the link to anybody who is asking – you are being helpful as opposed to trying to hard-sell something and this helps build stronger relationships with your customers over time.
Use the data gathered to build audience personas and you may even uncover a new segment in your target market you didn’t know existed.
Take this new target audience and tailor some social media posts, a blog post, or maybe run some Facebook ads to see how engaged they are and how you can develop and nurture new relationships.
Use your social accounts and social media analytics to help and add value. Stop trying to sell stuff nobody is ready to buy.
Your social media accounts are more than just a way to broadcast what you’re up to.
Social networks can be an invaluable tool for generating new leads and understanding who your audience is!
With the rise of social media, businesses now have an unprecedented opportunity to engage with their customers in a whole new way.
Nowadays, we don’t just browse online storefronts or track down our favorite products on store shelves; no!
These days many brands are using platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to post updates about themselves for all fans worldwide. Due to social media and its influence on our daily lives marketing strategy has changed dramatically.
Sure the end game is to educate potential customers about your products and services with the end result being a sale.
Social media marketing Strategy has to now form a central part of any marketing exercise in your company. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, the majority of your customers will have at least one active social media account, so why not leverage that data to engage with them online.
Traditional Media Marketing and whats changed
Traditional marketing such as print media like newspapers, posters, flyers, or leaflet drops was all the rage in what seems like a lifetime ago. Today though things have moved on.
Most people I know consume their news via a smartphone or tablet. You only really get exposed to advertisements if you choose to watch a video or accidentally click on a link that has been disguised as a news item.
When you browse through the endless streams of content on social media platforms you will notice some Ads along the way and that’s to be expected.
Each of the platforms is using advertising spend to monetize their platforms, and that’s fine – we all have to get paid some way or another.
Just about every action to take online creates a piece of data, and it’s this data that the online marketers are using to build up profiles about all of us so they can create social media marketing strategies and target us with relevant ads as we browse.
You can leverage this data for your business and build out custom campaigns based on user demographics and hundreds of other data points to boost the effectiveness of your campaigns.
The trick is to do it without being too intrusive.
Example: You have a conversation with a friend about something completely random – the following day you are bombarded with Ads about that very product – freaky right.
That’s the new world of marketing we live in. We are always online and generate huge amounts of data that companies use to target us.
But things are changing again.
The end of App Tracking as we know it…
I bought a new smartphone the other day as the battery life on my other one was terrible after years of hard use.
The first thing I noticed with the latest Apple OS 14.5 was the option to turn off tracking on any new App I installed. It will be interesting to see how this impacts data collection and targeting campaigns once this gets a head of steam.
All that juicy data we were unknowingly giving away will start to dry up.
With a market cap of over $2b, Apple can afford to do this because they make their fortunes with hardware. 59% of their money comes from iPhone sales alone, whereas the social media platforms make money from advertising spend so having access to this lake of data helps the effectiveness of your campaigns and convinces you to keep spending on Ads because they are working.
But what does this change means for everybody else that relies on this data?
That’s the next billion-dollar question and only time will tell.
What can you do?
One big strategy that we employ with every social media marketing campaign is content. Content is always the safer play in terms of getting a solid return on your investment of both time and money.
It all starts with content
A well-researched piece of greenfield content will outlive any advertising campaign or promotion in terms of inbound traffic to your website.
This content can be a page on your website detailing one of your products or services, or a blog post explaining the benefits to customers of using your product or service.
Here is a quick example of what I mean:
We have a client who sells widgets and they sell really well, but one of the blocking factors to getting a sale is customer education.
Customers know they want one of the widgets and have the immediate need to purchase one – but they are not quite sure what size widget they need.
We created a piece of content, including keyword research to satisfy Google search queries from his customers and competitive research to see what other companies were ranking in the search results, and the type of content Google was showing to make sure we captured the right search intent.
Now, within this content, we explain everything you need to know about choosing the right widget and added in some links for people who, once they had the right information were ready to make a purchase.
Ok, let me add the following caveat. When you publish a new piece of content on your website that is step 1 of many.
You now need to use your social media marketing strategy to promote that content and give it the initial awareness and lift it deserves among your customers and followers across each of the social media platforms.
Once the content gets picked up and indexed by Google, because you have done your keyword research, there is a high chance that it will rank for certain search terms when people type them into Google.
This will provide you with a stream of relevant traffic to your website from customers looking to be educated about your product and because you have invested the time in giving them all the answers there is a high probability that they will buy it from you.
This is part of every campaign we run because it delivers results time and time again for our clients.
Also with the right content, you can create unlimited images, captions, and posts for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote it.
Tracking Effectiveness
Every campaign we run, either paid advertising or organic search campaigns is backed by reporting. We need to be able to measure the effectiveness of everything we do and provide ROI reports to clients to show they are getting value for money.
You can also track the effectiveness of your campaigns with the following important metrics:
Engagement: The top of our list would be engagement. By engagement, we mean clicks on your content, comments, and likes.
Clicks are a great indicator that you are on message – You should always be trying to drive people back to your website where you have complete control over the data and by persuading people to click on your links on social media posts you can show them your best content.
With other platforms like Instagram you can measure saved posts and with Pinterest, if that is a channel you use, then ‘pinned’ posts are the best ones to track.
Reach: This is based on the number of people on your profiles that have seen any content you have published. Organic reach has dwindled over the past number of years due to the vast volumes of data published every hour. Every tweak of the platform algorithms also seems to push you even more towards paid advertising.
Followers: This is more of a vanity metric, but can help you influence in some cases. Having thousands of followers is one thing but having thousands of engaged followers is another. It’s all about engagement here
Ultimately it will come down to sales because in reality you can not go into a Bank on a Monday morning with a bag of engagement or Likes and deposit them into your account.
Get The Message Right
One thing we always look at in detail is messaging and intent. This stems from our understanding of Search Traffic and years of data research into buying patterns and customer research.
A customer will only buy when they are ready. It now takes up to 18 touch-points to convince a customer to buy from you.
That’s a lot of effort on your part, but not if you have a well-defined social media marketing strategy, coupled with your traditional internal marketing plans.
You can use Social Media Marketing to create many of these touchpoints and data and research to show your content to customers right what they are ready to buy. This strategy can be delivered via paid advertising and re-targeting Ads on social media.
You can influence potential buyers much earlier in the buying cycle with content if you do your research and create valuable content that answers any potential pre-sales questions they may have.
This ‘education’ process builds trust, brand awareness, and gives you the ability to get your products and services in front of customers early in the buying cycle – long before they have decided who to buy from – very powerful when done right.