Business Development, Marketing

Social Media Marketing – A game-changer

Social media marketing (SMM) is the use of social media platforms to connect to the target audience to build a brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic by creating and sharing content. This involves publishing great content on social media profiles, listening to and engaging followers, analyzing the results, and running social media advertisements.

There is also a range of social media management tools that help businesses to get the most out of the social media platforms listed above. Platforms, like Buffer, are social media management tools available that can help one achieve success with social media marketing. Whether one wants to build a brand or grow the business, social media would give the necessary exposure.

Social media marketing includes activities like posting text and image updates, videos, and other content that drives audience engagement. It also involves paid social media advertising.

Before beginning social media marketing campaigns, one should consider the business’s goals as per the strategic business plan.

Answers to the following questions would help to define the social media marketing goals:

What is to be achieved through social media marketing?
Who is the target audience?
Where would the target audience be and how would they use social media?
What message is to be sent to the audience with social media marketing?

Social media marketing can help with several goals, such as:

Increasing website traffic
Building conversions
Raising brand awareness
Creating a brand identity and positive brand association
Improving communication and interaction with key audiences

The bigger and more engaged the audience is on social media networks, the easier it will be for a brand to achieve every other marketing goal on the list.

Here are a few social media marketing tips to start social media campaigns.

Social Media Content Planning — Building a social media marketing plan is essential. Keyword research and competitive research should be considered to help brainstorm content ideas that will interest the target audience.
Great Social Content —Similar to other areas of online marketing, content reigns supreme when it comes to social media marketing. Thus, post updates should be regular and they should offer truly valuable information that ideal customers will find helpful and interesting. The content that is shared on social networks may include social media images, videos, infographics, how-to guides and likes.

A Consistent Brand Image — Using social media for marketing enables a business to project the brand image across a variety of different social media platforms. It should stay consistent.
Social Media for Content Promotion — Social media marketing is a perfect channel for sharing the best site and blog content with readers. Once a loyal following is built on social media, one would be able to post all new content in a user-friendly way. Great blog content would help one build more followers as content marketing and social media marketing benefit each other.
Sharing Curated Links — While using social media for marketing is a great way to leverage one’s own unique, original content to gain followers, fans, and devotees, it is also an opportunity to link to outside articles as well. If other sources provide worthy, valuable information that the target audience would enjoy, one should surely link them. Curating and linking to outside sources improves trust and reliability.
Tracking Competitors — It is always important to keep an eye on competitors—they can provide valuable data for keyword research and other social media marketing insight. One must update himself from such information and try to better while incorporating the same.
Measuring Success with Analytics — The performance of Social media marketing strategies must be tracked. Tools like Google Analytics can be used that would help to measure the most triumphant social media marketing techniques, as well as determine which strategies should not be applied. Tracking tags must be attached to social media marketing campaigns so that one can properly monitor them. Analytics should be used within each social platform for even more insight into which of the social content is performing best with the audience.
Social Media Crisis Management — Strategies for social media crisis management should be kept ready in case the plan backfires.

A well-thought-out small business plan is not enough if it is not implemented the same way. Thus one needs to create visually attractive content so that even before the customer reads the details, they should be impressed by what they see. The idea is to attract the eyes before they connect with the brand.

The strategies that are used to attract customers should also focus on connecting with the audience as, without connection, no relationship lasts long. A better connection with the audience leads to more loyal customers and, thus, makes one take the lead, leaving the competition way behind.

The Importance Of Social Media Marketing

Social media has emerged as the most influential and important virtual space where the platform is not only used for social networking but also as a great medium for digitally advertising a brand and its products.

The power of social media is commendable as it helps to reach a large number of people within seconds of posting an ad, helping one reduce costs. It helps the brand reach out to the potential audience through these social media advertisements.

With the huge number of online users, marketers must make the best out of the chance of marketing on digital forums where they can reach the maximum number of potential buyers compared to traditional media marketing like print or television.

Social Media Marketing Is Important for a Business Or Brand

It is important to use platforms that are commonly used by customers so that the brand can reach out to the target audience at a more effective rate.

Most users spend a large part of their time during the entire day and night on social media networks. Being a business on social media networks, one can make the most out of these consumers’ habits, which can help to create some major leads.

Social media channels help to attract the right customers with the right information at the right time and help to showcase the product or brand to potential customers at the right times. It gives the chance to make the most out of social media marketing strategies.

Social media marketing is important for a business for several reasons. A few are enlisted below:

The brand gets a prominent presence

Having an online presence as a business on any of the social media forums like Facebook or Instagram is a great way to interact with the target audience at large and connect with them on a personal level. This gives the chance to tell the story of the brand to all the followers and inspire them through successes or past failures. Social media gives a brand more exposure and helps to better understand the audience. Customers can know the brand and relate to the stories on a more personal level as well. People might find it intriguing to know how the brand was built and, thus, through these posts, brand awareness is created. Thus it’s an absolute need as a business start-up owner in this digitally connected world. It adds more meaning to the brand, and customers love it more when they see the realities of businesses. To ensure that the brand story is heard and spreads at a faster rate, one has to work on the content so that it is appropriate enough to impress the audience.

2. More Audience in a Small Budget

Social media advertising is one of the least expensive ways of marketing a business digitally. With so many different advertising tools available on social media forums, one can create cost-effective social-media plans and reach a greater audience easily. Digital competition is always on at a high, thus SEO should be emphasised to gain extra mileage.

Once social media marketing is strategized effectively, it would help to increase the traffic on the profiles on these forums, which will eventually lead them to the websites.

Even with a smaller budget for advertisements, one can help the business on these social networking forums, where through increased marketing, the process of digital growth for a brand quickens.

3. Helps increase Brand Awareness and Recall

Social media marketing helps a business to create a bond between a brand and a potential buyer to convert them from just potential customers to loyal and regular ones. For the target audience with the potential of becoming buyers, it is important that a business or brand is connected with them through social media forums, creating an impression on their minds so much that it is on top of their minds whenever they search or think about buying a similar product.

4. Learn The Buying Patterns Of the target Customers

Social media networks give businesses a chance to follow their consumers’ activities or potential buyers. This helps brands be more informed about their target audience, their likes, dislikes, and interests so that they can create a better sales and marketing strategy to attract such customers. This pattern knowledge helps in designing digital marketing strategies to attract the right customers and meet their demands.

Therefore, one can create content that is relatable to the audience, increasing engagement on the social media presence. This gives access to see different demographics of people who visited the brand page and what kind of content was liked the most on the social media profile. The distribution and marketing skills would be improved and it would create more engaging content.

5. Increases the overall ROI

Social media marketing and advertising can help to increase the return on investment, as the cost of advertising on these social media forums is often less than the return, thus generating more revenue. Hundreds and thousands of people can be reached by simply targeting ads, reducing the overall advertising costs. Social media pages help in attracting potential buyers, and at the same time, they aim to keep the potential customers engaged on their specific social media networks so that both the brand and the customers can benefit from this.

This increased user time on their social media networks increases the possibility of users seeing the ad or the business profile, and therefore visiting the same and then eventually becoming buyers.

Social media is an increasingly powerful platform. Being a business in this digital era can be of great benefit if this opportunity is used to the fullest by entrepreneurs and business start-up owners. Creating an extremely influential social media presence is the key to creating persuasive and appealing content that would connect the audience instantly. There is a captive audience online every moment, waiting for the perfect brand to fulfil their need.

Here are some more related articles :

How SEO improves a startup business

6 Reasons why startup business should use email marketing

The role of Social Media in startup business

6 Cost effective ways to market small businesses

Why lead nurturing campaign is crucial for a startup

Please read more about Ande’s thought leadership on Future Businesses and the top 10 technologies that would prevail in our future times.

As a Startup Specialist and the founder of Aditya Group, Thailand, Ande Aditya is often hired as a Business Advisor to assist business owners to execute their vision.

21 Industries | 22 Startups | 6 Countries | 12 Awards