The world of digital marketing, which has gained momentum in recent years with the accessibility of network resources to every home, is an arena that is made up of several different content worlds. Along with email marketing, and digital marketing in various search engines (such as a Google advertising campaign or website promotion), a major discipline in digital marketing refers to marketing through social networks.
Building a social media marketing plan is not a trivial matter. In order to formulate a marketing strategy and adapt it to the various characteristics of social networks, one needs to be familiar with their mechanism of activity. In this context, it is important to fully understand the target audience that characterizes the particular social network in which they are interested in marketing the services or products of the business, how this target audience uses the social network, its activity times, the appropriate content format for the social network and more.
Although marketing through social networks may seem like a complex activity that requires learning Internet marketing, actually engaging with an expert in the field will allow you to make sure that you also utilize all the capabilities of the platform in a way that best suits your business, and also maintain the ability to run profitable campaigns. The leads you produce return on investment.
Just before we dive into building a marketing strategy on social networks, let’s first try to understand what benefits advertising on these networks produces for us, and when it will be the preferred option for us over the other options.
What are the benefits of social media marketing for us?
Instagram advertising, marketing activities on Facebook, creating a ticketing ad, targeting the target audience on LinkedIn, promoting a YouTube video and in fact any activity on a social network through which we make marketing content accessible to the target audience produces for us as the advertising business a host of benefits.
We will immediately focus on four key benefits, however it will be important to understand that professional advertising on social networks can certainly generate quite a bit of different and different added value for the business. So without exaggerating, these are four content worlds where social media advertising can generate value:
Postal Code
The various social networks are a powerful platform that manages a lot of information, direct and indirect, about its users. Direct information is information that the various surfers voluntarily contribute, such as profile pictures, hobbies, group memberships, comments and shares, and indirect information is how much they use the web, their willingness to be involved in certain content, the chance they choose to click on an ad, and more.
This information is worth quite a bit of money for advertisers. It allows business owners to focus their marketing messages only on the relevant segment of the population, the one that will respond to the various publications, and its conversion rates will justify the existence of the campaign.
For that matter, let’s say for a moment that advertisers are interested in marketing a product or service that is suitable for women aged fifty to sixty from the lowlands. Such targeting through social media is easy and simple, allowing the advertiser to create an ad in the language and targeting relevant to that target audience.
Choosing the social network in which one works for the purpose of managing the marketing campaign, can also greatly influence the character of the target audience. Social networks like Tiktok are characterized by a young audience while networks like Pinterest are characterized by an audience that is mostly female and art-oriented.
When a marketing campaign targets a specific audience, the chances of conversion rates being high are greater. Targeting and significantly expanding a target audience often hurts conversion rates, forcing the campaign manager to use general texts, ones that will appeal to large and diverse audiences, and those that are often less effective in terms of sales.
Virality
This is one of the standout features that make social media advertising especially lucrative. When launching an advertising campaign, two types of exposure of the target audience to the marketing content should be taken into account: direct exposure, for which the advertiser pays, and indirect exposure, for which the advertiser does not pay.
When does an audience’s indirect exposure to the campaign’s marketing content occur? Especially when surfers on the social network interact with the content: they share the advertising, respond to it, tag friends with whom the advertising is relevant, join the brand’s fan page, recommend the brand, and more.
When advertisers turn to incorporate an advertising campaign on social media, one of their overarching goals is to achieve the best performance on the lowest budget. The viral feature of social networks, allows those advertisers to reach new audiences at no cost if they have bothered and invested in quality content, which creates real added value for the target audience.
Interactivity
Another characteristic that is important to recognize when it comes to advertising on social networks is the interactivity that the advertising platform allows when surfers are exposed to the marketing content. Advertising on Facebook for businesses, for example, is not a one-way process in which the advertiser produces content consumed by the surfers. In the process of advertising on Facebook, it is possible for surfers to contact the brand. They can ask questions, be interested in prices for products or services, ask for more information and also ask the brand to get back to them privately.
This discourse, along with the great permutations it manages to produce, makes publicity viral, and the benefits of virality we have already discussed in the previous section. Beyond that, there is a real opportunity for the business to catch the customer while he is still in a state of attention and maturity to make a contract with the business.
In contrast, Google-sponsored or organic promotion is conducted differently. When a surfer comes to the website of the business, visits it, consumes the various contents on it, and then leaves, the site owner does not have sufficient information that will allow him to present this surfer in the future with new offers.
Reaching the customer even when he is not looking for you
Advertising on social networks creates another advantage for marketers: it allows them to reach a target audience, even when it is not looking at the point in time for the service or product offered, and may not even be aware of the existence of such a service or product.
In this work configuration, Instagram advertising, for example, allows you to market new products to a specific target audience, even if it has not encountered these products before. This is a significant advantage, as waiting for the target audience to develop an awareness of the product or service and bother to search for it themselves may take a long time, and even then the degree of effectiveness of the move is questionable.
The goals of social media marketing
Once we understand the benefits that advertising on social media can bring us, we will try to review the overarching goals that a business can set for itself when it begins to drive such an advertising process. What can a business get from advertising on one social network or another? Why do money houses invest considerable budgets in advertising a business on social media? Here are some of the reasons for launching such an advertising campaign:
Expanding brand awareness
If you run a new and unfamiliar brand in the market and want to break through and expand the target audience’s familiarity with the product or service you provide – a social network is definitely a powerful tool that will help you achieve this goal. Through a campaign on the social network, you can define that the goal of the campaign will be to improve brand awareness and increase exposure to new target audiences.
An online advertising agency will recommend that you, in this case, retain the target audience broadly, but not too broadly, and focus the various contents of the campaign on creating an initial familiarity of the target audience with the brand’s products and services. In such cases, the content strategy will review the main problems faced by the surfers for whom the product or service is offered, and the possible solutions offered by the brand accordingly.
Building communities with a high level of user engagement
Another goal of setting up a Facebook marketing campaign, for example, could be to build a supportive and knowledgeable community around a particular challenge, for which the business provides one of the solutions. Managing a community is a real Torah, and involves creating rules of conduct in the community, defining what is allowed and what is forbidden, and finding the added value that surfers will receive from the community.
Once an entire community enjoys the various content offered in the community, and can also offer possible questions and answers to the issues that bother it, it will also be possible to incorporate marketing content, of course to the appropriate extent, and while wrapping quality content.
Take for example a community that has sprung up around the topic of running sports. In such a community, where tens of thousands of people are active, one can consult on the purchase of various products, such as shoe models, watches, running headphones, running belts, running pants, and more. Along with content with significant added value, there is also room in such a group for surfers’ questions and marketing offers with added value for surfers.
Building a community has tremendous marketing value. A community strengthens the connection between the various members in it, connects the potential customers to the values of the brand, and enables mutual fertilization and added value for the surfers who come to it. The big advantage in the community is that surfers keep coming back to it even when they do not need information immediately. This way, you can increase the chances that marketing content will be able to generate sales.
Sale of products and services
The overarching goal of a social media marketing campaign can of course be sales. At the end of the day, it is important to remember that businesses do not invest a significant portion of their budget in marketing on social media for heaven’s sake. They do this in order to increase revenue and generate profits. Therefore, a significant portion of social media marketing campaigns has one main goal – to increase direct sales of products or services.
Some social networks, such as Facebook, allow for real sales through the platform with it, so that one brand owner or another is not even required to regularly set up and operate a website and can rely exclusively on the social network to offer content to the relevant audience.
Measuring sentiment
One of the most important assets available to a business is its reputation. When a business has a good reputation, which is passed on by word of mouth, its marketing infrastructure is of much higher quality and enables sales to be generated in a much better way.
One of the other overarching goals for which business owners go on social media marketing campaigns is to understand the online sentiment: What do natural surfers who come to its advertising say about the brand? How strong is the brand in the network? Are there many complaints from surfers about the service of the home business? What is the level of customer satisfaction with the service provided by the business?
Managing a campaign on social networks will, in this case, allow the business management to obtain the information necessary for the management of a quality campaign.
Customer Service
Another goal of running an online marketing campaign is the ability of the business to provide better quality customer service through social networks. When the customer is in the arena of the social network, the answer of the business can become much more available, much more accessible, and save the surfer long and tedious waiting times. In addition, this written communication enables automation of the provision of the service and ensures that it is documented and that it can be subsequently interrogated more easily.
Many of the businesses operate an array of bots through the social network, in order to provide a quick initial response to the customer, take details from him for further treatment, and direct him to additional contact channels if necessary. These bots are active 24 hours a day, allowing the business to provide a solution even outside of standard working hours. They are also able to handle a large number of customers simultaneously and direct the customer to a human representative after gathering critical information that can aid the sales and service process.
How to create a social media marketing strategy?
How should a business that wants to market on social networks act in order to establish this marketing setup? What are the critical steps he must take to ensure the accuracy and quality implementation of this marketing strategy? What are the ways in which such a business can measure, monitor, and refine its marketing campaign so that it generates the greatest added value for it? In this article, we will review 8 important steps that every social media advertising strategy should include.
Goal selection
In order to properly implement a campaign on social networks, such as a sponsored campaign on Facebook, one must first define what exactly one is trying to achieve through the campaign. Is the campaign designed to increase brand awareness on the web? Is the campaign intended to sell a specific product? Is the campaign designed to encourage people to join a Facebook group or a business Facebook page? Is the campaign designed to maximize the quality of user engagement in the various content?
Goal selection should be specific and measurable. That is, not only increases the number of followers of the business page but the number of followers who expect it at the end of the campaign. Not only increasing the number of shares of quality and constitutive post, but also the number of shares and the level of exposure of the post to various web surfers.
Understanding the target audience
In order to conduct a successful campaign on social networks, in-depth analysis and understanding of the campaign’s target audience are needed. In this context, it will be important to know to which age group the target audience belongs? What are his interests? How patient is he in consuming long and in-depth content? What are his habits? When does he visit the social network? What other social networks does he use? How willing is he to be involved in the brand’s content strategy, share, comment, tag, and more?
It should be noted that the more accurate and segmented the target audience, the greater the chance, assuming the target audience is wisely of course, that a larger portion of this target audience will take part in the brand’s conversion chain, register, purchase, join the brand’s Facebook page, Will share and actually perform any action defined by the business as a successful conversion of this target audience.
Mapping the competition environment
It will be very important to understand: Businesses do not operate in a vacuum. Even the most successful campaign, with the wittiest slogan and the most segmented target audience, will not be effective if it does not address the competition environment. When mapping the overall competitive environment, it will be important for you to understand what added value your competitors provide and what their relative advantage is: Do they offer good prices of your own Is their exhibit considered an authority in the field? Are their shipments faster? Is the warranty period longer? Is customer service better? Is the diversity in the different products better?
An in-depth understanding of the competitive environment will allow you to understand where it will be worthwhile to invest your resources correctly while managing your marketing campaign. Moreover, an analysis of the competitive environment will provide you with information as to where it would be a shame for you to make an investment of resources to produce a worthy competitive alternative.
Performing self-audit in the social field
In order to properly run a marketing campaign on social media, it will be important that you first know what your real social status is. How is your brand perceived online? How do random surfers react to it? Does it get a lot of negative reviews? Do the various visitors appreciate the service you provide? Managing advertisements on Facebook must take into account your situation even before the campaign is launched in order to create possible call and response scripts for surfers who contact the brand.
Improving the social profile
Just before you go out on a Facebook campaign, stop for a moment and check: Has your Facebook business profile improved? Are all the pictures contain original and high-quality pictures, the ones you will want to be proud of? Are the texts sharpened enough? What does the profile of reviews and recommendations on the brand’s Facebook page look like? Does it faithfully represent the service values you want to provide to surfers?
If the answer to some of the questions here is no, stop everything and turn to improve your business profile. It would be unprofessional if a surfer tried to find out who was behind the brand, and there would be no basic details like configuration, a few words about the mog and the values that characterize it, and of course a few words about his main areas of expertise.
Get inspired by quality sources
How do you do it right? How to brand a business on social media successfully? Well, you can always track the success of other leading brands. Have an in-depth look at these brand pages on the net, try to understand what works so well in them, have learned from the professionals who have accumulated many miles of experience in the field, and derived from this mapping a real work plan for execution.
Getting inspired by other sources should be an integral part of a business’ marketing strategy. The assumption that not all wisdom sits with us is necessary in order to advance the business towards achieving higher quality goals.
Creating a social content plan
A social content plan must include many different aspects in relation to brand promotion on the various social networks: What content would you like to post? What issues will they deal with? What will be the format of this content? Who will create this content? When will you publish them? What will be the sharing strategy you would like to encourage?
A business social content plan must be backed up by schedules and resources that will take part in implementing the plan. Before setting out, it will be important for the business to understand that it must harness all the organs in the company for the success of this program.
Continuous measurement, evaluation, and improvement
A social strategy-based marketing strategy must be monitored on an ongoing basis. Meanwhile, an online advertising company that is engaged in formulating a marketing strategy for a business in the social world, must update it regularly in accordance with developments and changes. Such developments can occur as a result of new products or services entering the market, changing consumer consumption habits, repeated complaints about the products provided by the business, and in fact for any other reason affecting various factors in the competition environment.
The ability to adapt the marketing strategy of the business in social in accordance with trends and changes in the market is one of the main strengths of a digital marketing project. Unlike billboard campaigns or TV-based campaigns, it is much easier to make changes to campaigns that run on social networks, to stop or pause them, to optimize their target audience, and to adapt them to the changing environment.
In other words: Interested in creating a social media marketing strategy that works well and is immune to changes, developments, and new trends? Do not freeze on the yeast, and we updated it all the time.
Questions and Answers
What benefits does social media marketing bring to us?
Through a social network, advertisers can target their marketing messages to a segmented target audience, enjoy free exposure to additional surfers on the social network, and create an interactive communication model with the customer.
For what purposes is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is done in order to increase brand awareness, increase sales, provide better quality customer service, and appreciate the brand sentiment in the network.
How to create a social networking-based marketing strategy?
Building a marketing strategy for social networks consists of eight steps: selecting goals, understanding the target audience, mapping the competition environment, conducting self-criticism of the brand, improving the brand’s social profile, receiving inspiration from quality sources, creating a social content plan, measuring, evaluating and constantly improving.
Does the right choice of the social network have a bearing on the success of the marketing process?
Of course. Each social network has its unique characteristics, the target audience to which the content on the network is adapted, as well as the different nature of use, and therefore the marketing process must be carried out in a network that suits the needs of the business.
How important is mapping the competition environment before setting up a social media marketing campaign?
Mapping the competition environment is a must-do before embarking on a marketing campaign, as the goal of the campaign is to emphasize the brand’s added value and its relative advantages over other value propositions.
