The rise in popularity of social media has revolutionized the way people do marketing these days. Brands shifted their focus from traditional media to social media platforms in an effort to grow their businesses. However, many can find the big world of social media quite intimidating. Today we will discuss 10 tips and tricks a company can use to run a successful social media marketing campaign.
1. Have a set goal
Having a goal set for your social media marketing is a smart business move. Using smart goal setting strategy for social media marketing can prove very successful for the company. For this, you have to set a goal which is specific, measurable and attainable.
- Be specific – If you set vague goals like getting more business, it won’t prove profitable and also won’t help companies to pinpoint their objective to create a metric to measure success. Your goal for social media marketing should be very specific about what you want to achieve and how it can be achieved.
- Measurable – Apart from setting a specific goal, your social media marketing objective should be measurable, which will help you get a specific answer about whether you hit the set goal or missed your goal by a certain percentage.
- Attainable – Your goal should be attainable and relevant as well. Setting an unattainable goal will only be demotivating and frustrating. This happens when you set irrelevant marketing goals for your business. Setting relevant goals like building a certain amount of followers for your company’s social media platform or increasing your website traffic is relevant and attainable for a successful social media marketing campaign.
- Time bound – Giving deadlines to complete these goals is considered to be more productive and keeps the company accountable to its goals. Setting specific dates and times to a task will help the company to be on track and achieve success.
Having a set goal for your marketing project answers the question about why the company needs to have a social media marketing campaign. The next step for the company is to decide who they should target to get any results from the campaign.
2. Identifying your audience
The message behind your marketing campaign won’t be effective if you don’t have a set target audience. Target audiences are a demographic of people who are most likely to be interested in buying a specific product from a specific company. Having a target audience and developing the blueprint for your marketing campaign accordingly will result in a successful marketing campaign.
A company can specify its target audience by following three important points.
- Reviewing regular customers – The company should start by reviewing its regular customers. The customers satisfied with the company’s products are a good starting point for the company to find their target audience. Studying the returning customers’ preferences, demographics and industries is a good way to understand who the company can target with their marketing campaign.
- Reviewing customer support – The second step for the company should be to listen to the customer support to get more information about your customers’ preferences. Knowing such information will help you get an understanding of what your customers find more interesting and engaging. This information will help the company create an effective marketing campaign.
- Clarity regarding the product – Having a clear picture about your product is an important point in deciding a target audience. Having a clear understanding about what are the problems your product solves and how it makes the buyer’s job easier will help the company show its value and appeal to potential customers through marketing.
3. Identifying the best platforms
Running a social media marketing campaign consumes a large amount of time and money. Hence, determining the best social media platform for your campaign is an important step. As it is considered a huge mistake to try and increase the company’s followers on several different social media sites since the person in charge of managing the platforms can get overwhelmed and off-track leading to an unsatisfactory result. Hence the company should use different social media platforms, on the basis of their customers. Snapchat and Instagram are best platforms for the company if their products appeal to a younger audience. Similarly, Facebook is the best option for selling products directly to customers. Linkedin is a good platform if the company is marketing to other companies. Pinterest is also a great platform to promote a company’s products as it is considered the third most popular site among adults. Using Pinterest can guarantee an increase in the company’s website traffic. Following your competitors’ social media platforms is also a good option to determine which social media platform you should use on a larger scale. Studying the competitors’ presence on the platforms and the way they engage with their customers can prove to be beneficial for your company.
4. A qualified social media manager
A company can have a great social media marketing plan and target audience in mind, but an inexperienced and no good social media manager will lead to an unsuccessful marketing campaign. Many companies make the mistake of hiring inexperienced and average social media managers, as the common belief is anyone can handle social media quite easily. Contrary to popular belief, handling social media platforms is a very tricky business. Managing social media marketing requires the expertise of a qualified person. A qualified manager with organizational skills and expertise in branding is quite helpful for the company’s marketing campaign. A person who can choose the right content, interact with the followers and can also set both long term and short term goals for the company is a good fit to handle the company’s social media marketing. Moreover, the social media manager should be organized and should be able to come up with a step by step approach to carry out the company’s marketing strategies. Furthermore, a good social media manager should possess strong knowledge about the company and exhibit professionalism in every situation.
5. Being consistent
Just creating social media accounts for your business does not guarantee a successful result for your social media marketing campaign. Writing a blog or posting a picture once in a while is not considered running a social media marketing campaign and does not show any effective results. To see any success in their marketing campaign, a company should be consistent in creating and posting content keeping its audience in mind. Writing blogs and creating webinars keeping the targeted customers in mind is a wise way to engage with the audience. Moreover, posting relevant information regarding the company and guest articles by satisfied customers is another wise marketing strategy as new customers tend to trust the experience of a previous customer more than what the company says. However, the company should avoid constantly putting up posts which encourage customers to buy their products. This will put off the audience and may result in the company losing followers on its social media platforms.
6. Influencer marketing
It’s a known fact that almost 50 % of people rely on the reviews of influencers before buying a product. A company can use this trend for its benefit. By marketing products through individuals with a large following on social media, a company can increase its follower base and its sales. This kind of marketing is often referred as influencer marketing. To build an Influencer Marketing database, the company should start by identifying influencers who compliment the company’s products and services and then reach out to them and build relationships. . The next step should be to extend an offer to the influencers to promote the company’s products in exchange for something which will be beneficial for the said influencer. This can include joining a trade show with the company or promoting themselves in the company’s webinar or on its social media platforms. Another important step in influencer marketing is to monitor the influencer’s feedback regarding the company’s product. If the review of the product by the influencer is negative, it’s always good to have prior information regarding that. Hence, communication with the influencers is a really important part of such marketing.
7. Audience growth
It is important to grow your audience on social media platforms. When relevant people come across the company’s post and might have an interest in the company or company’s product, it results in lead generation. Hence, an important goal for any social media manager is to increase the follower base on relevant social media platforms of the company. The company can start by making sure the returning customers are following the company’s social media platforms and leaving their positive reviews regarding the company and its products. This will give a feeling of genuineness to new followers. The company can also target the returning customers with product updates and new content which may prompt them to purchase the products of the company again. Another way to increase the company’s social media followers is paid advertisements. Organic growth supported by paid advertisements helps a company reach more of its target audience and increase their followers. Advertisements are a great way to be discovered by potential buyers, who otherwise would not come across the company’s posts.
8. Audience engagement
Another important aspect of running a successful social media marketing is the way the company is engaging with its followers. One of the key rules of getting social media engagement is to always respond. Social media management should not be a one way street. The company should always personally respond to the new followers and answer their queries. They should also address issues faced by the customers fast and comment and like on other posts. Tagging people who may be interested in the information you are sharing is another way to increase audience engagement. Adding links to posts is a good way to direct the followers to company’s other platforms like blogs and websites. Hashtags are another way to be more discoverable by new followers. Using hashtags which are related to the company and its products will help the audience discover the company’s posts more easily.
9. Keeping track of results
It is important to keep track of the growth and results of social media marketing and compare them with the goals set at the beginning of the marketing campaign. This will help the company keep a track of which strategies are working for them and which are not. This can be done by analyzing various aspects like increase in followers or engagement in posts on all social media platforms. Analyzing the increase in the number of followers on each social media platform and comparing them with the initial goal gives an insight regarding the overall performance of the campaign. Engagement on the company’s social media platforms can be determined through the likes, shares and comments on the company’s post. This helps in the identification of what kind of posts are doing great among the audience. Clicks on the links provided by your posts and blogs help determine if the efforts of social media marketing show any results sales wise.
10. Improving and repeating
Keeping a track of your growth during the marketing campaign also helps the company map out future social media marketing campaigns and how to make them successful. Analyzing what kind of posts are creating more engagements, the pattern of posts which are gaining more attention, the days and times when the audience engagement is more and what kind of content is well received on which platform is important. This data can be used to improve future strategies and turn future social media marketing efforts into a bigger success.
The growing popularity of social media has made it a powerful tool for businesses. Results of marketing through social media are huge and also require an immense amount of hard work. Whacked Out Media is a pioneer when it comes to social media marketing. The creative and experienced social media managers at Whacked Out Media constantly work hard to reach the goals set by the clients with satisfying results.
