Some Basics: This Checklist will Save Your Marketing Campaign from Misery
As social media marketing is arguably the most effective marketing tool for the 21st century, so many companies within the same business industry are trying to make the best use of it. Hence, competition has reached its pinnacle already. For winning the competition, you need to differentiate your social media marketing campaign from your competitors. Ensuring that is anything but easy. You need to take care of the following for carrying out an effective campaign:
Do Your Research
Like all types of marketing campaigns, social media marketing requires market research as well. Basically, the research is conducted mainly for sorting out the targeted audience. Target audience demographics need to be dynamic and diverse. It might include a specific locality, age group, occupation, habit, and many more. The common mistake done by most marketers is to keep the variables too broad. You have to remember, people’s habits and life choices are very diverse these days. So, it is not possible for you to generalize a certain group of people and convert them into your customers with generic marketing campaigns. Social media marketing can easily get distracted and target the wrong people if the variables are too generic.
First, determine the type of people who are more likely to purchase your products. Then try to discover some other characteristics of the targeted group you have determined. For example, if you are selling weight loss supplements, then the probable group you are looking for are middle-aged people, as they are the ones most vulnerable to falling victim to diseases caused by obese bodies. You need to target them as your social media marketing audience. Then try to discover the habits of the middle-aged people in your area. You can try to find out their routine, favorite ways to spend leisure time, entertainment preferences, etc. Once that research is done, then you can easily engage with them by creating advertisement materials, which will tell them that their lives will be even better if they take your supplements to get rid of extra calories.
Know Your Competition
Unless you are introducing an entirely new service or product, you will have to face competition. If your business is relatively new, established competitors will give you a hard time selling your services or products. But there are reasons why they are already established, right? Try to examine them and their marketing strategies. This will provide you with two exclusive benefits for your social media marketing campaign. First, you might follow some of their strategies to get your share of the pie. And secondly, by analyzing those strategies you might find ways to defeat them in the marketing game. If a competitor is already reputed in the market, starting a campaign based on user generated campaign can be a very effective strategy.
Set Small Objectives
Though it is brilliant to have a bigger goal, setting smaller objectives only makes things more feasible. It also prevents you from chewing more than you can swallow. You simply can’t expect to sell a plethora of products just after starting social media marketing. Rather, create a timeline and include step-by-step objectives in that. You can start with reaching a certain amount of people initially. Then you can target a significant portion of those people go to your landing page. Thus, you will reach your ultimate goal of converting those individuals into customers.
Create Killer Content
Probably this is the most important part of the whole thing. For social media marketing, you need content to post on your social media account. The content depends on the social media platform you are choosing as your primary marketing ground. If you are choosing Facebook, you can use well-written posts, if you are choosing Youtube, you have to create videos and so on. But remember, you have to prevent yourself from being too much carried away. Every single social media post can’t be promotional. You only are going to annoy your targeted audience by doing that. Rather, follow a ratio of 70-30 and try to engage the audience as much as possible.
Though most of your social media content will not be promotional, you can create a better launching pad for your marketing campaign with non-promotional posts. If we take the case of promoting weight loss solutions through social media marketing, then your non-promotional posts can be about the benefits of having a fit body, effective exercises, or diseases caused by fatty tissues. If you engage your audience with these pieces, they will be more likely to get attracted to products when you post the actual promotional content.
While creating content for social media marketing purposes, make sure you understand your audience properly. The tone and the build-up of the content need to be suitable for the specific audience you have chosen. For instance, if you are targeting teenagers, the tone should be more energetic and trendy, so that the teens can relate.
Don’t Fall Short on Tools
If you are enthusiastic enough, you might do fine without tools. But if your business starts to grow, or you want to run more than one campaign at the same time, then using social media marketing tools is at your best interest. These tools enable users to schedule and manage tools. This helps you to make your content management strategies better. You can prepare the content beforehand, and the tools can post the content for you in due time.
Want to Know How the Pros Do It?
The above-mentioned basics are actually ‘BASICS’. These are the factors that are generic and used by whoever deals with digital marketing campaigns. It will be tough for you to get any competitive advantage whatsoever by only focusing on generic techniques and methods. Some advanced methods can make your social media marketing campaign more dynamic and effective. These techniques, if used wisely, can bring you quick success and profit.
Building a Customer Community
It is just not enough to get lots of followers on your social media pages. You need to give those followers a sense of community as well. If the followers feel like a part of the community, then they are more likely to become loyal customers of your brand. The customer community can be developed through different means. For example, you might run promotional giveaways for the followers of your page. You may require adding more friends or sharing the post on their news feed for participating in the giveaway contest. Also, organizing annual meet-ups for the followers is a great way of improving community sense, which can boost your social media marketing campaign. If the followers have a better connection among themselves, they will value your page even more as the page worked as the medium for developing the community in the first place.
Opt for Co-promotions
You might find this recommendation a bit out of place, as I am going to ask you to work in cahoots with some of the companies that have the same target market as you do. But trust me, working in cooperation only helps both parties when it comes to social media marketing. It won’t work if you just try to work together with every single competitor you have. Rather, find out someone who needs cooperation just as you do, and both of you need something from each other.
Working together enables you to get your hands on their loyal audience base, and market your products. Your partner organization will receive the same facilities as well. It becomes most convenient for both parties when they specialize on different social media platforms. For instance, if you have a few hundred thousand followers on Facebook, then you might partner with someone who has a significant number of followers on Youtube. If you market each other’s pages or products in more comfortable platforms respectively, both of you can have access to Facebook and Youtube follower groups to run your social media marketing campaigns.
Before making your alliance, discuss the terms and conditions of the partnership properly. Partnerships might go south if a conflict of interest occurs. For avoiding such complicated circumstances, make sure you determine how the partnership will go beforehand.
Some Positive External Influence is Always Precious
Social media influencers are great mediums for boosting your own presence, hence increasing your sales. This is a classic and old technique, yet effective. Find an influencer who can showcase your service or product to their social media accounts. Thus, you get an entry to their follower base. Moreover, such influencers are role models for regular users in the vast majority of instances. If they showcase your services, their followers will be willing to enjoy the service. Choose your influencer wisely for your unique social media marketing campaign. Select someone who appeals to your targeted audience.
Conclusion
Before you start your social media marketing campaign, you must learn to be patient. Marketing success through social media doesn’t come easy. Also, you need to spend a lot of time and effort for getting tangible results. If you are following the recommendations, and still failing to achieve your target, you should not be disheartened and keep up the good work. Some marketers receive quick success just because they are lucky. If you stick to the basics and show creativity, then you will reach your target today or tomorrow. Best of luck!