In this digital world, Social media has become essential part for any business. Whether it’s a large conglomerate or a budding e-commerce store, everyone can leverage the power of social media marketing – engaging their target audience and growing the brand. As consumers, we sub-consciously rely on our favourite brand’s social media engagement, reviews, presence and more to make our choices.
If you are a business and want to see better results from your Social Media Marketing efforts, here are some important basics that you should get right.
1. Get your target audience, competition research and messaging right-
To develop an effective marketing strategy, start with defining and narrowing your focus to the desired target audience. This will help your brand communicate with the right strategy and messaging to the set of people who have the most potential to convert as your customers. For making content marketing work, know your potential consumer well – their interests, shopping behaviours, needs, lifestyle and more. Competitor research is another critical aspect that cannot be overlooked as your target audience is probably on your competitors list as well.
Pro Tip: Facebook can help you see your competitors past ads. Isn’t that useful? If you want to know more just Google or drop us a quick message.
2. Choose the right social media platforms to find your audience
Once the target audience is clear, selecting the social media platforms where you can find and engage with them should be your next priority. Most brands have presence on most of the key platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the primary focus from a content and engagement perspective should be on the most appropriate platform for your target audience.
3. Focus on relevant metrics and analytics – make decisions based on data
Social Media metrics are crucial for setting goals and measuring your performance. Gone are the days when the focus was only on ‘likes’ and ‘followers’. Define the best goals for your brand and measure your weekly/ monthly performance against it. Some common metrics that you should look at include engagement rates, impressions and reach, share of voice, referrals and conversions, response rates, best performing content and demographics. This can significantly help you plan your future content strategy (and goals).
Pro Tip: Consistent user engagement and user generated content can improve reach.
4. Have consistent brand appearance and messaging everywhere
Online marketing is a unique opportunity for businesses to create a consistent brand. From a logo that tells your story to content style and tone of voice across social media platforms can bring in substantial competitive advantage. Consistent brand image will increase trust and loyalty towards your brand. The messaging should also be consistent and engaging, that’s easy for brand recall -if your audience knows you as a unique cheerful brand, do not change that vibe in your messaging or brand appearance. Consistency is key.
5. Leverage Ads with right objectives for right results (focus on metrics)
Define clear objectives and the type of audience you are trying to reach for your advertisements – are you trying to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or conversions? Is your audience hot or cold towards your brand or the product that you are promoting? These questions should have an impact on how the ad is designed and configured. Like organic social media content, monitoring metrics that matter for your target audience is key. For example, if your audience is cold do not expect conversions before you at least hit frequency (number of times the ad has been shown to an average user) above 2.5.
Pro Tip: For most brands, Facebook Ads and Google Ads work best. Do not try Programmatic Ads (ads on other platforms) unless there is a real specific need.
6. Complement social media with other areas like Email Marketing, SEO and Blogs
While Social Media Marketing focuses only on getting your content, engagement and focus right on the social media platforms, these need to be complemented with other areas to grow a brand. Some of the iron-age digital marketing techniques like Blogs and Email Marketing still work like a charm to date. Right SEO to get a higher organic search rank, targeting the right keywords, making your website look and feel (and the content) consistent with your social channels, newsletters, subscriptions, and other similar activities can tremendously boost engagement levels and reach on social media.
Pro Tip: While you are working to get your website SEO right, focus on Search Engine Marketing (Google/ Bing Search Ads) to build traction.
In the post Covid-19 world today, more than ever, right digital marketing efforts can make or break a brand. Once these basics are set right over a period, the focus should shift to advance analytics, retargeting to drive target audience through a conversion funnel, advance content marketing and performance marketing. A host of tools for advanced management, content creation, user behaviour analytics and research are available today to take your efforts to the next level.
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