An effective marketing strategy focuses on reaching your ideal audience where they spend their time and offering them what they are already looking for. There are few places better suited for this than social media. Over 4.5 billion people are on social media. People on these platforms actively communicate and connect with each other, including discussing what they do and don’t like. The opportunities to learn about your target audience and literally meet them right where they spend their time are abundant.
Social media marketing uses the opportunities already afforded within social media to help you grow your brand. Here’s what you should know about using social media to improve your brand awareness, sales, and lead conversion.
Social media marketing (SMM) takes work. You need to craft a usable strategy that will produce results. Thankfully, with a good plan, you are far more likely to get the results that you want.
“Social media marketing involves a hybrid of
data-driven analysis and creative thinking.”
– Kaelen Reyes, Varga Social Media Specialist
SMM involves creating and promoting content on one or more social media platforms with the goal of promoting awareness of your brand and/or products, building community, or bringing more traffic to your website. The way that you approach your strategy should vary based on which platforms you use and what you want to do with them.
The social media platform that you choose for marketing your business should be the one that fits your brand identity the best. You’ll need to consider where your branding is showcased most effectively, or which platform will best help you achieve your goals. Your answers to those questions can help you choose between some of these social media platforms:
Boasting almost 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest and most widely used social media platform and is still popular amongst Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. This is a great platform to use for brand awareness and advertising, with Facebook ads being one of the top paid advertising platforms today.
YouTube
When you think of watching a video online, you probably think of YouTube. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world with 2.2 billion regular users and, while being used primarily by Millennials, the platform is popular with a wide range of ages and genders. YouTube is best for brand awareness via sharing engaging and educational video content.
This platform has close to 1.5 billion active monthly users and is most popular amongst Millennials. Instagram is used to share visually appealing imagery and videos. It is an ideal platform to raise brand awareness through audience engagement and encourage the creation of user-generated content. It is also a great resource to sell products using its e-commerce tools.
TikTok
Known for its short-form videos and creative content, TikTok is popular with Gen Z and younger Millennials. With 1 billion monthly users, this platform can work best when showcasing your brand’s relatability and building brand awareness.
Based almost entirely around visual imagery, Pinterest serves close to 445 million users as of March 2023. This platform is used to share ideas and inspirations along with some helpful tips. Pinterest is an ideal platform for promoting products and even offers ecommerce tools that allow you to sell directly to consumers.
The top micro-blogging social media platform is Twitter with 238 million monthly users, up to 26% of which are Millennials. This social media platform is best for building a community of users interested in your brand and for any news or announcements that need to be made.
LinkedIn is a unique social platform as it has a clear-cut audience of working professionals looking to network. This makes it the best platform for developing business relationships and establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry, if you choose. With over 424 million registered users, their active monthly user base is about 310 million and is used by Baby Boomers, Gen X and Millennials.
While you can choose to use more than one platform, it is a good idea to consider the amount of time and resources you’ll be able to devote to updating and posting on them.
The other question you’ll need to ask yourself when building your social media marketing strategy is what approach you want to take. Let’s say you’ve chosen your platforms and set them up. What are you going to use them for? Your brand’s social media activities will fall into one of these three categories:
The organic or unpaid approach is the most common and budget-friendly one, encompassing all posts or interactions on your social media platforms that you don’t pay to promote. Organic marketing includes the use of SEO tactics, consistent posting, and regular interaction with your audience to ensure your content is seen and help achieve your marketing goals such as increasing brand awareness or better website traffic.
While paid advertising does require more funding than organic SMM, it is still a largely budget-friendly avenue. Paid ads on social media will include boosted posts or sponsored ads that appear on users’ timelines/feeds. By inputting your target audience details, you can set your posts up to be seen by the right people and increase the chances they’ll take the desired action (i.e., clicking to make a purchase). Remarketing is another version of paid advertising that proves effective since you are showing the same types of content to people who have already shown interest in what you have to offer.
This is a type of paid advertising that can help to humanize your brand and increase your audience’s trust in what you have to offer. While often less than cheap, influencer marketing includes the benefit of having your content seen by a wider audience that may not have seen it otherwise. Take your time when choosing an influencer to work with though as partnering with the wrong person can backfire more than you might think.
We understand why some businesses may hesitate to create a brand profile or page on social media. It takes work to maintain your chosen platform profiles while staying on top of posting content regularly. This is why Varga offers social media management to help make your SMM easier and allow you to enjoy benefits such as:
Brand Awareness
Social media is a great place to showcase some of those defining details that make up your brand identity. The language you use in your posts, the imagery you choose, and even the content you reshare allow you to better establish your business and increase brand awareness in the process. After all, if people like what they see you produce on social media, they’ll be more likely to pay attention, share what you have to say and interact with you.
Your Target Audience
A person on a sales call is likely to interact with you in a different way than someone who is commenting on a humorous post you make on Facebook. You can use social media to reach your ideal audience more directly and form a better connection with them. This can provide a chance to learn a lot more about them which can help you improve your marketing efforts across the board.
to Your Website
Social media marketing gives you multiple opportunities to drive traffic to your website. For starters, many profiles allow you to include your website link for easy access. Along with this, you have a multitude of other options to bring people back to your site, from adding links to your blog to posting direct links to your products.
Conversions, and Sales
Social media may give you a chance to present your business to someone who wouldn’t have seen your content otherwise, increasing your potential customer opportunities (leads). Effectively used, SMM can help you nudge those leads to take a desired action like signing up for something or making a purchase. The best part? It’s never forced. They’re looking at what you have to say because they’re already interested.
Contrary to popular belief, the goal isn’t to go viral. Going viral produces inflated numbers that are nearly impossible to sustain or achieve again. Realistically, you should create a social media strategy that is effective and focused on long-term results. These are some key factors you’ll want to include in any social media marketing strategy you create.
1. Pick The Profiles That Work Best for You.
Let’s be real—unless you have a dedicated social media team, you likely aren’t able to consistently maintain more than two or three platforms for your business. Choose those platforms wisely! For example, if you are an e-commerce brand, you may want to put more focus on Instagram or Pinterest while a business focused more on brand awareness may opt for Facebook or even Twitter.
2. Make Sure Your Profiles Are Set Up Properly.
Do you have your name typed in correctly? Is your profile image on-brand? Do the people who are responsible for posting your content know what your brand voice is? Before you start posting on any platform, make sure to have these and other details figured out to ensure things work right from the start. Your followers and customers should be able to pick you out easily on each platform based on your branding.
3. Choose Goals to Track and Measure.
What are you hoping to accomplish with your social media strategy? Set those goals for yourself, including ideal time frames. This will allow you to track how well your strategy is working so you can celebrate your successes, learn from your failures, and adjust your strategy to be as effective as possible.
4. Create a Content Calendar That Targets Your Ideal Audience.
Here’s a fun fact, you probably already have written or visual content that you can repurpose as posts on your social media platform(s). If you post a blog, you can use repost a pull quote or bulleted list from it on Facebook or Instagram with an on-brand image, for example. Whatever you decide to post, the key thing to remember is that it must resonate with your audience to move the needle and bring in results.
5. Have a Plan for Community Management.
If people respond to your posts or reshare them, the best thing that you can do is interact with them. Like the posts that someone reshares or responds to positive comments. You can and should respond to negative comments too, though we advise careful consideration here to ensure you are addressing concerns without overpromising.
Creating an effective social media marketing strategy that creates results takes time. So, what if time is precisely what you are short on? We can help! We are experts at “moving the needle” and making a difference for our clients. Reach out to Varga, Inc. to find out how we can help you create and launch a social media strategy that accomplishes your business goals.
