A little over a decade ago, internet was just a source of information, but with changing times it has become increasingly social. With the rapid growth in technology, and the advancement in availability of internet, the marketing facilities have also come at the ease of fingertip. Now that internet is easily accessible in every household, businesses & brands have the opportunity to interact directly with their target audience and bond with them.
In the last few years, the internet has evolved like a “social web”, connecting like-minded people at a single platform where they can express their thoughts on social media. Businesses can work on these thoughts, to better their social media marketing strategy and reach out to a huge number of audiences.
With nearly 3.8 billion social media users across the globe and growing, it is quite obvious why businesses are taking steps to plan out their social media marketing strategy. Social websites bring together individuals with similar interests. The impact of social media transcends almost every part of our lives- work, politics, news, studying, and many more.
Social platforms offer a way to reach the expectation of the individual and build relations that are more than just transactions. After all, the core of social media lies in being “social”, which represents an interaction between the community, and the focus is not only on selling of products.
In this article, we will understand how social media agency is stepping up their capabilities and making use of the social platforms to stay relevant in the ever-changing social landscape. With so many possibilities, it may seem overwhelming at first, but a proper implementation of all the planning needs to be done, so with this blog, we will have complete understanding about social media marketing.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing (SMM) is making use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive traffic to the website. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running social media platforms. Social media platforms provide a way for the social media marketing agency to reach out to new customers and keep engaging with the new ones.
Now that we are living in the digital age, we are exposed to social media every day. This is why for any campaign, no matter how big or how small, social media is a crucial platform to promote their product and services, create a brand recognition and increase their conversion rates. It has become a necessary marketing channel, which all businesses need to tap into at some capacity to be successful. Moreover, if a stellar social media marketing strategy is put into action, great results will be seen firsthand. That sounds easy as you are more or less acquainted with various social media platforms, but using social media platforms and running a business profile on them, are two different things. This requires a clear understanding of how to engage customers with your services. You will have to put in a lot of work and invest in the resources to achieve success.
To grow your business online you need to build a good social media marketing strategy. It is always imperative to keep up-to-date with the latest social media trends and understand the changing algorithms of various social media platforms.
Earlier, marketing used to be in the forms of television, radio, pamphlets, bill book, fax ads, etc. These methods were a bit tougher and time taking. Thanks to social media that the personalization of the content can be done on a single platform. The content can be presented in the forms of videos, blogs, infographics, or any other forms that have the potential to go viral. With hundreds of social media platforms available, the popular ones are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn etc.
Social media platforms
Whether you are already in social media marketing, or a new business looking to leverage social media marketing, it’s useful to look social media platforms around. This will allow you to maximize your brand reach in social media marketing and achieve your target goals of reaching out to a maximum number of people.
Most of the social media platforms are designed both for mobile as well as desktop. As mobile is easily accessible and portable, so the target is to increase the conversion rate on a mobile website so that the mobile users are not left untouched. The SMM services should also be prepared in such a way that the mobile users also find it friendly to access the services of any social media campaign and can avail the benefits of the campaign as per their choice. The marketing trends used in content show that the brand is keeping in touch with the thoughts of the user and is providing services that meet their needs.
It’s not about the size of social media sites but also that the social media platform is right for the business. Does this fit your brand image, does your target audience use that social media site? It might be good for you to read more about the social media sites that might be great for your brand and you may not have explored much about. While SMM services can be both paid and free, this depends on the business that gets them a bigger audience. At times paid social media is also relevant for a business to get their customers if a big amount of money is not to be paid. Social media promotion helps the business to reach out to a larger band of people and is proving to be a greater source of profit for businesses. Although there are many social media platforms, let us talk about some of them here:
• Facebook – By far, the largest social networking site in the world, and the most popular social media platform, Facebook is an excellent platform for brands to market their products to a huge audience. With nearly 1.79 billion daily active users worldwide, none of the relevant businesses would want to leave out on such a platform as they would miss out on a larger scale of people that may remain untouched if a social media marketing strategy is not prepared for this platform.
It’s easy to get started on Facebook because all the format works very easier be it texts, videos, live videos, chats, stories. But you should always remember that the Facebook algorithm prioritizes content that sparks conversations and meaningful interactions between people, especially those from family and friends. So, any social media campaign should put their business in such order that they meet the ends of the platform and take benefits of the platform to grow their business. SMM specialists may be useful here as they have the best idea on how to organize content to get the best of the platform.
Paid social media services can also be provided so that the platforms are aware that the business is for real marketing here. Facebook Ads target the most relevant users and bring the relevant customers upfront. Most of the users using Facebook trust it as the social media promotion platform (as is clear from the number of active users), and want to take the services from the comfort of their home.
The best part about advertising on Facebook is the specificity with which you can target your ideal customer. The advertisement can be optimized to choose the target audience based on their demographic, age, the device they are using, their interests, and a lot of other characteristics. Any social media marketing agency should first create a Facebook advertising campaign, to drive traffic to their website, increase conversions from visitors to customers, get engagement on their landing page and finally, the user ends up buying the product. Facebook also provides auto ad placement facility, but by disagreeing to it you can customize your ads according to your choice and meet the demands of the users as per their choice.
Social media campaigns should keep this in mind that the products are not pushed to people. They should try to attract the relevant users by displaying the context which the customers are looking for. The companies can leverage user-generated content to promote their brand by sharing how much other people like their products and services. There is the option to like & comment on the ads and also share them to reach out to other users. So, the business can take the best advantage of Facebook and can grow their customer base.
• Instagram – This is now a company that is owned by Facebook since 2012. The popularity of this platform is because of its simplicity as you just require a mobile to upload photos and videos. You can also post ads on Instagram and since Facebook owns this company, you can even run Facebook Ads alongside Instagram ads and this can boost your posts to get more visitors.
People post pics, tag friends, insert hash tags and double-tap any photo or video to show what they like on this platform. Instagram is and always was about pictures, but now videos have started gaining likes and the reels can be used in the social media marketing strategy to put the short videos and present it to the customers. You can also put short and long-form videos and share them on Instagram stories, this also works well to increase your brand popularity. The marketing strategy should be done in a way to influence the customers. To do this, try to put text formats, photos from your brand, and questions in text format, making use of hash tags, giving call-to-action.
65% of marketers participate in influencing marketing, so there is no surprise that you may want to join the brand that becomes popular. This is not just because of popularity, it is because there is a trust that gets associated with the brand and customers start believing in your services.
To get the best of Instagram, try to make use of the actions like having a compelling bio, a link to your website, use of emojis, relevant hash tags, images and video content, updating stories, running offers to boost engagement and Instagram ads to boost your posts.
• Twitter – Indeed, we are all familiar with the classic 140 (now 280) character social media platform, intended for users to share small information known as “tweets”. Twitter is one of the largest platforms for social listening. It is a social platform for news, entertainment, sports, politics, and more. What makes Twitter different is it allows real-time information, meaning what is happening right now.
Twitter allows businesses to know more about their customer and any social media marketing agency can make use of this, to stay up-to-date with the hot trends and topics going around. Social media promotion can be done on Twitter by running a social ad campaign, conducting contests and giveaways, using referrals. Twitter can be best used to study how often the tweet is made, is there a re-tweet of the product, the number of followers of the social media marketing agency, the engagement rate. The Twitter account needs to be audited from time to time to get all the relevant update and have a clear, measurable goal for your business. Checking out the services offered by your competitor is also a great move as this makes you aware of what you are lacking and what needs to be worked on to improve your brand awareness among the customers.
As twitter focuses only on the targeted content to get displayed, the SMM specialist may come in handy to present the content from the industry and increase the brand awareness to get the relevant number of customers to the campaign. The advantage of this platform can be taken by using a proper profile photo, header image, using bio, increasing followers, running a Twitter poll.
• LinkedIn – LinkedIn is more than just a resume and a job search site. It has evolved more into a professional site, where the experts from different industry, share their content and build their brand. With new social networks coming up constantly, LinkedIn is a platform that often gets underutilized, but the truth is different. It has become a platform for businesses to their leadership and authority in their industry and attracts the targeted customers to the website.
LinkedIn advertising can be used to boost content, sending personalized ads to LinkedIn inboxes, and displaying ads to the side of the site. LinkedIn gives access to useful features like analytics, connections, and brand-building as it is a platform to connect socially. You need to customize your profile by adding links to your portfolio and social networks on the LinkedIn page. This feature would help you to get greater traffic to your website getting them to access the specific area that they want.
Search engine optimization (SEO), can also be used to optimize your profile for customers to discover when searching for LinkedIn as their key term. You can try adding keywords to various sections of your profile like headline, summary, or work experience. You can always add or rearrange different sections in your profile to get the relevant audience as per the demands of your business. You can save searches, or add recruiters so that the features of your business get noticed to them. You can advertise your products by sending profile messages to people you are not connected with and offer them services like providing premium discounts, offering premium packages for a particular duration. This would attract the customers to get attached to the campaign. Always keep an eye on the network that viewed your profile and be identifiable. Join various LinkedIn groups and design all aspects of your LinkedIn page to popularize your business.
• YouTube – YouTube is owned by Google and is a video-sharing social media platform. Given the level of engagement that YouTube has, there is no doubt that had it been a search engine then, it would be the second most popular search engine after Google. Just like Facebook and Instagram, this is also popular to be used in mobile, and data suggests that most of the time the videos are viewed on the mobile app. It has the channels of most popular brands of the world, so no business can think of missing the benefits of YouTube for social marketing.
YouTube presents content in video formats, and there are options to show ads in between while the video is running. So, any business can present the ads in between the video content. The short ads containing relevant information are generally viewed by customers rather than the larger ones as it becomes repetitive and boring. Businesses can make use of paid social advertisements and customize the ads as the choice of the customers, depending on the type of content that they view. Social media promotion for any business can best be presented by getting to know what type of content the users like, and this can be identified knowing the type of content the user watches on the platform.
YouTube marketing can prove to the best as most internet users in one way or other use the videos of YouTube to get information on the content that they are wishing for. The SMM services to these users can be provided by studying these search histories and presenting the ads in accordance with their search. The ads can be free or can be paid but the agency gets the bigger platform to reach a larger base of customers and attract maximum users thus increasing the rate of investment.
Benefits of social media marketing
When any business begins creating content for marketing, they should always plan out a social media marketing strategy. Without a strategy, it would be like wandering in the forest without a map, where ultimately you will get lost. With a plan, it can be highly beneficial when done in the right way. Social media encompasses many platforms that the marketers are aware of and keep track of the upcoming networks.
The advantage of digital marketing at the time of Coronavirus was shown globally, and social media was the most used platform by companies to advertise and increase their business growth. Let’s discuss some of the benefits of the social media marketing that drive value across the entire customer lifecycle:
1. Increases brand awareness – As on social media platforms people increasingly spend their time, it automatically becomes a choice for social media marketing agencies to present their brand with valuable content and get in touch with the target audience. This provides them with the opportunity to look into their brands insights and get familiar with the services of the company. When this is done best, the brand can have a loyal base of followers, subscribers, and more. The more customers that you prosper from the social media platforms, the more chances of your brand becoming popular and increasing your sales growth.
2. Increase demand – Social media offers marketers multiple ways to reinforce their brand. It’s a good way to drive more people to your website and convert the visitors to sales. Using a proper social media strategy, can display ads to various users and get the leads to convert into customers. The trust and exposure to your brand as a whole attracts more users to your website and create even more demand for your product or service. With offers, promotions, and contents, you can engage your audience deeply and optimize conversion rate for your website.
3. SEO benefits – Search engine optimization is not only to improve the quality and quantity of website traffic but also benefits in the social media marketing strategy. Many marketers use the website as their base for their marketing benefits. But what if the customers are not able to find you, or you lack much behind than your competitors? The users will not be interested then in the purchase and there is no benefit to put all the efforts. So, an important part of your website is the ranking in the search engine results, where search engine optimization comes in.
SEO leverages keywords and focuses on the search query that the user makes. The keywords are then matched and help to deliver the content as per the search query, and thus increases the chances of leads getting converted into customers. This improves the online visibility of the campaign and the content lasts longer. This boosts the organic traffic and the trust of the visitors is strengthened. Some links of other websites can also be provided, as these links serve as proof-points and indicators to the search engine algorithm that your website offers relevant content around the pool of keywords.
Keyword research is important in SEO and helps arrange the content to be displayed as per the choice of the customers. Any social media platform pages are treated just like any other pages on the web index when it is displayed on the search engine result pages. With the proper use of the relevant keywords and links the social media platforms can get higher ranks that help them to appear easily to relevant traffic.
4. Networking and peer-to-peer influence – One of the best ways to engage your audience is to provide them with reasons to share your message with their networks in a seamless, natural, and appealing manner. Peer-to-peer marketing recommendations are an extremely powerful way to increase brand visibility. This increases the social proof, builds trust in the customers who would be joining the business, as people believe their network of peers more than a branded campaign.
People view any brand-to-buyer advertisement more trustable, as they have trust in the people telling them about the brands and also, they see them using the product or services which give them a belief that the company is good to deal with. Buyers believe what the company advertises, but they gain more trust when their peers say something about the brand. They are likely to generate more sales and have high chances of retention with the company. With the help of the right tools like marketing automation and social media marketing platform, you’re not only able to listen and respond to your audience, but also track revenue associated with your social media marketing services and make a crystal-clear impact on your peers.
5. Higher conversion rates – The immense power that social media has can be understood by the fact that the popular and easy to access applications like WhatApp, Instagram, Facebook are day by day reaching out to a larger domain of people. Social media is easily accessible, available both for the desktop as well as mobile devices and provides access to a variety of services on a single platform.
The first impression that the customers get after reaching the website from the social media links is the landing pages. The landing pages should thus be optimized in a presentable way that is appealing to the buyer and has relevant steps to guide the customer through the journey.
A defining call-to-action that answers the unheard questions of the buyer, and makes it clear to potential customers what actions are to be taken next to buy the product. SMM services when designed as per the choice of the customer and when they find it easy and friendly to use, increases the chances of conversion rates and thus helps the company achieve its goals.
6. Cost effectiveness – Social media marketing is an optimal solution for businesses to save money and still be connected with their consumer base. Even at times, social media marketing might not even cost companies anything at all, but they can be effective in increasing exposure and complementing a bigger marketing campaign. Not only are social media campaigns economical (often free) to implement and track, they can assist in bringing down overall marketing spending as well.
Social media promotion reduces the cost of any business to a greater extent, and the business also reaches maximum customers in a very short time. If you want social media to be effective for the business, you need to manage your account in a very organized manner. It’s not about simply waiting for users to follow your account and posting about sales. You need to post product descriptions in a way that customers visit your site after seeing the description, meaning they are attracted to your website.
7. Promoting content – This is why you do marketing, right? It seems pretty general that you promote the content and you promote the product. To promote the content, you can use headlines; add images at the time of posting on social media platforms. The most important thing to keep in mind is to be creative. The content that you post should be original. Being creative and telling descriptions in a story format will allow the audience to build their perception of the product. The story format helps customers relate to your business and then touch them up later.
8. Build customer loyalty – Brand loyalty is when people strongly favor a particular brand over others and do not need to be convinced, as they are already enjoying the products and prefer them over the competitors with similar offerings. Customers have endless options when they want to buy things, and brand loyalty will help you retain customers for a long time. If you can provide them with services that they do not find anywhere else, you can keep them coming back. This may seem hard to be done, but you can break this down to attainable tactics and goals that become part of your social media marketing strategy.
There are plenty of marketing tactics that the companies use to increase brand loyalty like providing stellar customer service, reward programs, community building, having a brand story, and many more. A SMM specialist can help you deal with this and get your company a strong brand loyalty.
Core pillars of social media marketing
In today’s high-tech world everyone is aware of the size of social media. Users are shifting from desktop browsing to mobile browsing and because of that, there is an immense increase in the active social media users. Social media is becoming a major part of inbound marketing and helping brands and businesses to reach out to their target audience. A business wants to understand how well it’s performing on the social media platform and check its engagement with customers and sales on social media with analytical tools (social media analytics). It tries to reach a specific set of an audience using good quality social media advertising. As a whole some of the core pillars of social media marketing are discussed below:
1. Social strategy – The key ingredient to marketing on social media is to make a strategy on what are the goals of the business, who are your target audience, and what they want. To create customer-centric strategies, try to think from the customer’s point of view. Try to set goals, choose proper platforms and content to attract the audience.
The major social media platforms mentioned above as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. are some of the bigger and most popular social media platforms. The business should try to pick some of the best platforms that suits their business type, target audience, etc. and be on them, rather than being on multiple platforms that’s not favorable to their growth. The business can make use of the different social media promotion tools to decide which platform is best for them.
2. Planning & publishing – Social media marketing for small businesses and large businesses usually starts with having a consistent presence on social media and allow businesses to be discovered by prospective customers. Planning should be done on the type of image, videos, blog posts, etc. to post on the social media platform. It’s just as you decide the content to post on your Facebook profile. The planning helps in deciding the content as per the popularity in the social media like Facebook gives more relevance to images, Instagram to images and stories, YouTube to videos and so on. This planning would help you to choose the correct platform as the demand of the site.
Publishing content at the right time is also very important to grasp the attention of the users. The publishing needs to be as per accordance with the present market scenario. Using paid social media services, SMM specialists can be consulted for planning and publishing on the platforms.
3. Listening & engagement – As your business grows and the social media following grows, the brand will start becoming more popular. There will be comments and tags on your social media posts. If it’s a positive comment, try to surprise the customers by offering them discounts and if it’s a negative comment try asking them what corrections are to be done.
You can manually check the notifications received and try to encourage users to tag your brand on relevant comments and posts that they make. Figure out what the audiences are looking for and try to solve the root of the problem. This would give you an idea about the choice of the buyer and would help you in preparing your social media strategy. Solve all the doubts arising in the mind of the customers.
4. Analytics & reporting – Social media analytics is analyzing data from different social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. You should be aware of how your posts are performing on social media platforms. Every company should prepare the reports that help them in analyzing: whether their performance has improved as compared to the previous periods, the total number of positive and negative mention, how many people use hash tags on the brand name, how many users are sharing, commenting, and liking the post, increase in the followers compared to previous periods. There are different kinds of report like MTD, QTD, YTD, MoM, YoY reports, etc. that can be used chart the progress of social media campaigns.
5. Advertising – One of the well-known and important parts of social media is social ads. Social ads are used to spread awareness about your brand. This helps you in reaching the maximum number of users and displaying ads to your targeted audience. Bigger companies who have more money to invest use paid social media advertising tools to prepare reports and analyze the performance of the campaign.
These reports help businesses to better their marketing strategy to reach a wider range of audiences and get the targeted customers to buy their products or services. You can even choose the audience to whom you want to display your ads. This target audience can be chosen based on their demographics, interests, behavior, and many other points. When running a social media advertising campaign, you can consider using an advertising tool to make bulk changes, automate processes, and optimize your ads.
Impact of social media in present environment
Social media has a huge impact on how businesses find and grow with their audiences. Earlier companies had to travel to live events and organize seminars, workshops, etc. to find a group of customers. This used a great amount of money, and the small businesses found it difficult to even arrange such seminars. But social media has transformed that by many prospects and has made work easier for companies to reach out to customers.
The customers see the company’s product details and then click on the link to reach the it’s website. The landing page optimization of the website should be as after clicking on the content displayed on the social media platform they reach the product page of the company otherwise, the customer has a negative impact about the company and they end up even leaving the website. In the present times, the thing that is displayed on social platforms should also be met on the website as this keeps the customer engaged to the website. If there is doubt in the mind of the customer, then it wouldn’t work well for the company. Social media has transformed things by:
• Allowing businesses to get in front of a targeted group of people virtually
• Changing the way businesses communicate with their audience
• Making it easy for businesses to provide value upfront before asking anything from a prospect
Most of the businesses think for a quick gain on the investment they do in social media campaigns. But they need to understand that it is a marathon and once the customers gain trust in your brand the bond will be given lifetime value and retention. The growth of social media marketing platforms has even become a major part in any SEO digital marketing campaign.
The SEO digital marketing helps to rank higher in SERPs creating a big impact regarding your customer and lead acquisition and conversion rate for your site. In today’s environment, social media cannot be left aside and has a greater impact on any business. Let’s see how not only the big businesses but even the small ones are getting benefitted from social media:
1. Increases consumer base - Marketing is the art of attracting and keeping customers. Building a strong customer base is what businesses are looking for as it is one of the core strategies for any business. You can build a strong customer base by taking into action some of the points:
• Free offer or discounts – Free is what everything can afford, and what customers are always fond of. With these free offers, you show the customers that you care for them, and tend to keep their choices in mind. The customers believe that you care for them and the trust builds up.
• Keep your content fresh – In any field, the changes in content keep taking place. Try presenting the customers with the updated content, so that they do not feel mislead and are always in trend with the market.
• Maintain strong customer support and service – A customer who contacts customer support for the first time is just as important as the one who contacts for the tenth time. The company should present the customer with services, to ease them the benefits at every stage. A good service would clear all their doubts and the problem would be sorted out if they face till the time, they make a final purchase. A happy customer shares positive feedback and great customer service leads to increased sales and revenue.
2. Increase product sale – You have been using social media to engage more fans and generate more sales. Social media is one of the growing channels to generate a solid ROI. Just like email marketing, content marketing, SEO, and PPC advertising. It’s time now to start amplifying the social media marketing strategy to get the sales rolling to increase the product sale.
Try providing reviews about the product from various users, this way the customer gets to know that the company is honest and trusts the services of the company. Try to convey messages to the customers that they give review in photos or video format and post them on your social media accounts. This way your product sales will get a boost and you will experience growth in your sale. Try investing in social media advertising as this would ensure high visibility for your brand among a relevant target audience. You can take the services of SMM specialist to help you advertise on social media platforms and increase product sales.
3. Allows businesses to become omni-present – With so many social media platforms available, a social media platform user person has multiple social media accounts. If any business touches even 2-3 of these platforms, then the customer gets to know that the brand is trying to get in touch, and this encourages the customer to have an overview of the company’s profile. Every customer wishes to have knowledge before they make a purchase, so having been through the broadcasting on different social media platforms, the customer has the products and services that the company offers.
Credible digital marketing services –
With an experienced team of analysts, experts we provide social media marketing services and help you grow up the brand name in the global world. We would solve almost all your problems concerning social media marketing services, as we deal in preparing white label reports, white label content marketing, doing digital analytics, doing market research. When you make use of our social media marketing services, we even do competition analysis that helps you be ahead of your competitors.
Wrap up
With all the above discussions it is now understandable that any brand be it small or big cannot miss out on the social media platforms for their businesses to grow. The best way to evaluate the importance of social media in marketing is to realize how people are inculcating social media in their everyday life. Social media marketing has become a necessity with the growing age of the internet and technology and various social platforms coming up from time to time. To have a successful business campaign, you can learn new strategies and tactics to grow your brand name. If you face any difficulty in planning your strategy you can avail of SMM services offered by the trusted digital marketing agency.
References:
• Social Media Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide