Online marketing is a key focus for most successful businesses. Whether they are investing lots of time into a high performing website, or they have a powerful social media strategy, digital technology is a driving force in effective marketing these days.
So if you are a business owner then you will, of course, want to make the most out of all of these kinds of opportunities. But sometimes if you don’t have much experience or knowledge of marketing, it can be difficult knowing where to start. For example, you might not know which web host to choose for your website, or which platforms to use for social media marketing.
There is no denying that social media is having a large impact on consumer decision-making and lead generation. At the beginning of 2020, a massive 3.80 billion people were active social media users, so there is obviously a huge reach opportunity.
Social media also plays a big part in influencing people’s opinions of a brand – 71% of customers who have had a positive experience on social media with a brand are more likely to recommend it to other people.
So, I think we all agree that social media is a very powerful marketing tool and you would be foolish to not take advantage of the business opportunities it can leverage.
You should use this as one medium, though; it can’t be used alone. Paid ads are also important. Don’t only consider Google, either, as a Bing Ads dashboard for business and marketing agencies can be just as profitable, if not more so for some businesses!
If you are looking for some advice on how to get started with social media, then here are some key areas that you should concentrate on:
Understand your audience
When you are first starting, you need to really think about who you will be trying to attract. Marketers often describe this process as creating an audience persona, basically identifying the type of people that your social media marketing will be aimed at. Using data about your typical customers will help you to do this, are they typically young professionals aged 18-30, or retired males in Manchester, for example. Once you have that information firmly in your head, you will know who you are creating your content for and can shape the tone, format etc. as you see fit to appeal more to your target audience.
Create awesome content
This is a lot easier to say than it is to do but creating engaging, share-worthy content is a massive factor in how well your social media marketing does. If you want to expand your social media reach, you want to create content that people will want to share or like. There is no exact formula for achieving this; sometimes you just strike lucky with an idea that goes viral. However, if you think about some of the key common themes of what people tend to share – something funny, or highly useful, something emotional or maybe even controversial. These are the kind of themes that tend to see great levels of success in social media. So try and be creative and jump onto any trends that are attracting a lot of attention.
Measure the success of campaigns
To understand what works for you and what doesn’t, you need to measure how well your different types of campaigns perform. What got the most retweets or likes? What did people share the most? Spend time to properly analyse the key metrics of social media and plan out your future campaigns based on what you learn from your analysis.
Pick the right platform
Different social media platforms work better for different industries. For example, if you are a B2B tech company then you will probably get greater success from a platform dedicated to professionals like LinkedIn. Or if you have a business that can effectively use images, maybe a hairdressers showing new hairstyles, or a cake shop showing a birthday cake, for example, Instagram would be a better platform for you.
There are plenty of social media platforms out there and it can be tempting to try all of them. However, that is going to be very time consuming, especially as you have to create different types of content for different platforms. Stick to one or two that you know are popular with your typical customer base. Then concentrate your efforts in creating content just for those selected platforms rather than wasting time on ones that won’t be as effective for you.