In recent years we have seen a significant boost in businesses going online, and the covid pandemic has further forced businesses to have an online presence. Nowadays, almost all companies are using the Internet to increase their reach. However, having an online presence doesn’t give you an edge over your competitors. You would need a customized social media marketing strategy. A social media marketing strategy includes everything you plan to do to achieve the desired results through social media. Once your social media marketing strategy is in place, all you need to do is follow it religiously to know if your efforts are succeeding or failing.
What is Social Media Marketing:
Social media marketing is the process of utilizing social media tools or channels to sell or promote anything, whether it is a brand, product, or service. You can use different social media marketing tools like analyzing apps, video maker apps, and much more to help you with it.
With an effective social media marketing strategy, you can quickly achieve the following.
- Increase brand awareness.
- The increase fan base and brand association by building active communities.
- Provide customer service 24*7 throughout the year.
- Target audiences for specialized products and services and display related ads only.
- Analyze performance and optimize your targets and strategy accordingly.
Steps to create an effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
- Know your audience:
The essential requirement of any marketing strategy is to know the target audience, and social media marketing is no exception. If you are deploying your resources without knowing the target audience, a large part of it will be wasted. Along with the target audience, you should also know about the suitable platforms deploying relevant resources. For example, if you are a B2B business, it’s not wise to run an ad campaign on Pinterest or Instagram. You should concentrate on LinkedIn or maybe Facebook. Similarly. Similarly, if your target is a young audience, go for Instagram instead of Facebook, as the data suggest Facebook is dominated by users of age between 30 and 49.
You can also create an ideal customer persona to understand your leads better. In this way, you can create content based on the likes of your potential buyers.
Here are a few things you should know while creating an ideal customer persona based on the product or services you sell.
- Age.
- Location.
- Occupation.
- Hobbies.
- Employee details.
Once you have gathered enough data, use analytics tools to make sense of it. With social media analytics tools, you can quickly get information related to your followers, like their locations, likes, devices they use, and much more. The data will help in targeting your audiences better.
2. Choose your goals wisely:
While employing the social media marketing strategy, keep your objective and goals clear and accurate. There is no way to measure the campaign’s success and R.O.I if you don’t have goals. Similarly, if your goals are unreal, there is no benefit in measuring them. So, keep your goals the S.M.A.R.T. way. Let’s see what S.M.A.R.T. means in terms of social media marketing.
- Specific: You must set your goals clear and defined.
Example: We will deploy chatbots in customer support on Twitter and other messaging apps.
- Measurable: You must be able to measure the progress of your marketing strategy.
Example: We will increase our R.O.I. to 7:1 by the end of this financial year.
- Achievable: You should set achievable goals.
Example: We will automate 50% of our work in the customer support domain. (You can’t automate everything in customer support due to the limitations of A.I.)
- Realistic: Your goals should be realistic and set according to the time, resources, and budget.
Example: This quarter, we will invest 22% of our marketing budget in paid ad campaigns.
- Time-bound: Set your goals that are achievable in a given time frame. It will make reporting and tracking easier.
Example: We will lower our average response rate to under one hour by the end of this month.
3. Identify success matrices that align with your goals:
Once you have determined your goals according to the S.M.A.R.T. technique, now it’s time to identify the critical success metrics. These key matrices will help you measure the success of your marketing strategy.
The following are five simple measures you would want to consider, and you can add or delete some depending upon your business needs.
- Impression/Audience reach.
- Traffic on landing pages through referrals.
- Growth and engagement of community pages.
- Brand association/Sentiment.
4. Focus on Content:
The success of every social media marketing strategy, good or bad, depends upon how you curate and create content. Additionally, while distributing content, remember each platform has its specific formats, which performs better on that particular platform. For example, use Facebook and Instagram for video content; similarly, you can use LinkedIn for text-only posts.
Here are some tips on content types that social media users love and respond to better.
- Content that adds quality to readers.
- Videos that create awareness.
Pro-tip: Use a professional video maker to create videos and add valuable stats to gather viewers’ attention.
- Content pieces announcing giveaways, coupons, or contests.
Another pro-tip: You can use the above-mentioned content pieces for acquiring new leads.
5. Analyze and Optimize:
Remember, neither was Rome built-in “a” day nor can you create a viral social media campaign on the first try. Learn from your mistakes, and finalize your marketing strategy through a bit of trial and error. You can improve with analytics tools, which will help you track and analyze the critical metrics. These tools can also boost your productivity by scheduling posts ahead of time.
You can measure the performance of your social media marketing strategy per the success metrics decided earlier. If working, OK; if not, it’s time to put aside and decide on a new marketing strategy for optimal success. Besides, a social media strategy isn’t forever; changing with time and social platforms.
Conclusion:
Creating a social media marketing strategy isn’t a tedious task if you deploy it wisely. You can easily create a successful social media strategy that may give you the winning edge over your competitors by following these steps. Additionally, you can also hire a social media marketing expert for your business.
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