Social Media Marketing
Do you believe Social Media Marketing is all about selfies & big brands? You may need a rethink as you could be giving your competitors a free kick.
It’s difficult to get past the hype of Social Media to get to the hidden gems that could drive customers your way. But it is not impossible!
It’s simply a matter of tying your objectives to your target audience and selecting the best platform to match.
- LinkedIn can connect you with targeted business people
- Facebook Advertising can connect with a precise demographic
- Instagram can use your awesome product images to drive traffic to your website
- A Google My Business page is essential for ranking & promoting every local business
- Twitter’s Tailored Audiences reaches people who are already interested in your business
Can you afford to not take advantage of Social Media Marketing?
Social Media is an Unstoppable Juggernaut
The statistics show that the average daily global usage of social media worldwide in 2015 was 106.2 minutes per day.
If monsters of social media such as Facebook had their way then people would rarely ever leave their platform and they are helping this along by adding more functionality all the time.
Even the business community have jumped on board with social. The number of LinkedIn member pageviews in Q1 of 2016 was 45 billion. Ignore this at your peril.
Social Media is Not All the Same
Whilst it is dangerous to put people into boxes you can, however, make some general distinctions about various social media platforms and their main usage.
Facebook allows people to keep in touch. It allows them to share precious things, funny things, updates on their families etc. It may not be the place to advertise your new line of earthmovers (unless they are being driven by a cat perhaps).
Certain products and services, however, do match the prevailing mood on Facebook. Others might be better using advertising on LinkedIn and be targeted to business owners in the accounting profession in Australia.
Social Media Advertising is all about Strategy
Sooner or later it all comes back to data analysis and strategy. You don’t go to an industrial area for a night out and a nice meal because that is not where the restaurants & theatres are located.
The product or service you are attempting to promote, the habits of your customers and your marketing budget all come into play when deciding upon a Social Media marketing strategy.
You may, in fact, use multiple social media platforms. You may tweak your message slightly for each platform and target a different (or more specific demographic) on one platform versus another.
How Do You Measure Social Media Success?
As with all digital marketing every major social media platform has extensive measurement statistics built in.
The key, of course, is to agree in advance what constitutes success for your social media campaign.
Is the the number of visits to a Facebook page, the number of likes, the number of people who click through to your website, the number of people that call, the volume of purchases etc etc. All of these are valid for various campaigns. It all depends upon the initial campaign strategy.
The Golden Rule with Social Media for Business – Be Generous, Be Relevant and Respect Everyone’s Time
Ever been to a friend’s barbecue where you meet someone for the first time and they tell you all about their product and then try and convince you to buy it?
Or perhaps worse still they labour on for ages about the technical intricacies of their industry and what they do.
Isn’t that thoroughly entertaining? NOT!!!
So think about Social Media like that barbecue. Don’t be the pushy boor who wants something from you without adding any value at all.
Always be considerate of your audience and always offer value to those that are best served by your products and services.
Our Social Media Marketing Process
Analysis – Data Mining
Understanding what we need to achieve with a social media strategy and aligning that to your business objectives is the first and most important step in this process.
So many businesses do social media infrequently without ever really understanding why they are doing it.
It is also essential to understand the target audience, where they congregate in social media and what they would be interested in within that “hangout”.
Social Media Strategy
Which social media platforms are we targeting? Who are our audience and what action do we want them to take (if any)?
What timeframe are we looking at? Will we change the platform, the content or the adds as the project moves forward?
What are our success criteria? How do we measure it? What are our fallback plans if one or more strategies are not meeting the criteria?
Execution – Getting It Done
In this phase our team will create any of your social media assets that do not already exist.
We will also put in place the required measurement code and processes to allow for review & continuous improvement.
We create (or work with your existing suppliers to create) advertisements or laser targeted content for each social media platform.
Measurement & Management
Once your campaigns are live we continue to monitor your results and work with you to continuously improve them.
Working together throughout the campaign we can leverage the results to fine tune the process making future campaigns even more successful.
