If you’re not yet leveraging social media marketing for business, then you’re already at a disadvantage. Social media can help businesses and professionals stand out from the crowd. Most of all, it can help businesses grow and give brands the boost that they need.
But what is social media marketing? And is it as daunting and complex as it seems to be? Business professionals and entrepreneurs need not worry about dipping their toes in this space. Dive into the definition of social media marketing for business, its benefits, how to create social media strategies and the trends businesses need to look out for below.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves using social media platforms to promote and advertise products, services, brands, or ideas. It leverages the power of various social media networks to boost the digital presence of its digital audience. Businesses can use a social media approach to connect with a target audience, engage with them, and ultimately achieve marketing goals. Here are some key aspects of social media marketing:
- Content Creation: Social media marketing relies heavily on creating and sharing various types of content, including text, images, videos, and infographics, that resonate with the target audience.
- Content Scheduling and Planning: Many social media marketers use scheduling tools to plan and automate content posting, ensuring a consistent online presence.
- Platform Selection: Different social media platforms cater to different demographics and interests. It’s recommended that businesses and marketers choose the platforms that are most relevant to their target audience. Popular social media sites and platforms include Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok.
- Audience Engagement: Engaging with the audience is crucial. This involves responding to comments, messages, and mentions, as well as fostering discussions and interactions related to your content.
- Paid Advertising: Most social media platforms offer paid advertising options, allowing businesses to promote their content to a wider audience. These ads can be highly targeted based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
- Analytics and Insights: Social media marketing tools provide analytics and insights into the performance of your campaigns. This data helps marketers track key metrics like reach, engagement, conversion rates, and ROI (return on investment).
- Goals and KPIs: Social media marketing campaigns should align with specific goals, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to measure the success of these goals.
- Community Building: Building a community or following on social media is an important aspect. It involves growing your network of followers who are genuinely interested in your brand and its content.
- Influencer Marketing: Some brands, especially bigger and more well-known ones, collaborate with social media influencers who have a significant following in their niche. These influencers can help promote products or services to their engaged audience.
- Social Listening: Monitoring social media conversations and mentions of your brand or relevant keywords is essential for understanding customer sentiment and addressing any issues or concerns.
Effective social media marketing requires a deep understanding of the target audience, creativity in content creation, strategic planning, and ongoing monitoring and adaptation. When done well, it can be a powerful tool for building brand recognition, engaging with customers, and driving business growth.
Here are a few statistics about social media marketing to help put things into perspective:
- Over 71% of people who have a positive experience with a business on social media will recommend that business to their networks.
- In 2022, it was reported that marketers spent $65.31 billion on social media advertising.
- Short-form video offers marketers the highest ROI of any social media marketing strategy.
- 68% of YouTube users watched YouTube to help them make a purchase decision.
- According to Hootsuite, 62.3% of Instagram users worldwide say they use the platform to follow or research brands and products.
What are the benefits of social media marketing?
Social media marketing offers a wide range of benefits for businesses and individuals alike. Here are some of its key advantages:
- Increased Brand Awareness: Social media platforms provide a vast and highly accessible audience. By consistently sharing valuable content and engaging with your audience, you can increase your brand’s visibility and recognition.
- Improved Brand Loyalty: Social media allows you to connect with your audience on a personal level. Engaging with them, responding to their comments and messages, and showing your brand’s human side can build stronger relationships and foster customer loyalty.
- Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional advertising methods, social media marketing can be very cost-effective. Many social media platforms offer free organic reach, and even paid advertising can be budget-friendly, especially when targeted effectively.
- Direct Communication: Social media provides a direct channel of communication between you and your audience. You can gather feedback, answer questions, address concerns, and even conduct customer service through these platforms.
- Increased Website Traffic: Sharing valuable content and linking back to your website can drive traffic to your site. This can lead to higher lead generation and potential sales for your brand.
- Lead Generation: Social media can be an effective platform for generating leads through forms, contests, and promotions. By offering valuable content and incentives, you can capture contact information from interested users.
- Improved SEO (search engine optimization): Social signals, such as social media shares and engagement, can indirectly impact your website’s search engine ranking. High-quality content that is widely shared on social media can boost your website’s visibility in search results.
- Market Research: Social media provides valuable insights into your audience’s preferences, opinions, and behaviors. You can use these insights to refine your marketing strategies and improve or add to your product offerings.
- Competitive Advantage: Being active and engaging on social media can set you apart from competitors who are not leveraging these platforms effectively. It can also help you stay updated on industry trends and competitors’ activities.
- Audience Targeting: Most social media platforms offer advanced targeting options for paid advertising. This allows you to reach a highly specific audience based on demographics, interests, behavior, and more, which ensures your content is seen by the right people.
- Global Reach: Social media has a global reach, making it possible for businesses to expand their audience beyond geographical boundaries. This can be especially beneficial for e-commerce, retail businesses, and international brands.
- Real-Time Marketing: Social media allows you to react quickly to current events and trends. This can be advantageous for timely promotions, daily engagement, and staying relevant in rapidly changing markets.
- Content Distribution: Social media provides a convenient platform for distributing and promoting your content. This includes blog posts, videos, infographics, or other forms of media or content in your content marketing.
- Measurable Results: Social media marketing tools offer detailed analytics and insights, allowing you to track the performance of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions for optimization.
- Increased Sales and Revenue: When executed effectively, social media marketing for businesses can drive traffic, leads, and conversions. This ultimately contributes to increased sales and revenue for businesses.
It’s important to note that the benefits of social media marketing can vary depending on your specific goals, target audience, and industry. A well-planned and executed social media strategy can help you harness these advantages to achieve your business objectives.
Which businesses use social media marketing?
Social media marketing is used by a wide range of businesses across various industries. Over the course of years, it has become a fundamental aspect of marketing and communication strategy for both small and large enterprises.
Here are some examples of businesses and industries that commonly use social media marketing:
- Retail and e-commerce
- Restaurants and food services
- Fashion and apparel
- Tech and electronics
- Healthcare and wellness
- Entertainment and media
- Travel and hospitality
- Real estate
- Financial services
- Automotive companies
- Artists and creators
- Startups
- Nonprofits and NGOs
- Education
- Professional services
- B2B (Business-to-Business)
How to create a social media marketing strategy for your business?
Building a social media marketing strategy for a business involves a structured approach. It’s also important to note that it will look different for every business, professional, or industry. The basics, however, will be similar and can guide any business into creating a solid strategy.
Here are the basic steps of social media marketing for business broken down:
Set Your Goals
Start by defining clear and specific goals for your business. These goals should be aligned with your overall business objectives. Common social media marketing goals include increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, boosting sales, and improving customer engagement.
Remember to also make sure your goals follow the SMART approach (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). For example, your goal could be to “increase Instagram followers by 20% in the next six months.”
Determine Metrics and KPIs
Next is to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your goals. These metrics will help you measure the success of your social media marketing strategy.
Examples of social media metrics and KPIs include likes, comments, shares, click-through rates, conversion rates, follower growth, and customer retention rates. You can also use third-party tools or the analytics provided by social media platforms to track these metrics.
Research Your Audience and Platforms
You also need to understand your target audience thoroughly. Create buyer personas to represent your ideal customers. Know their demographics, interests, pain points, and online behaviors.
Your platforms also matter, which means you need to research the social media platforms your audience frequents. Different platforms cater to different demographics and interests. Choose the ones that align with your audience and goals.
Create Engaging and Consistent Social Media Content
Develop a content strategy that aligns with your goals and resonates with your audience. Your content should provide value, entertain, educate, or solve problems. This means that you need to give enough attention to your social media content creation process as well.
Maintaining a consistent posting schedule is also a must. Consistency helps build trust with your audience and keeps your brand top-of-mind. Mix up your content types as well, including text posts, images, videos, stories, polls, and more. This will keep your feed diverse and engaging.
Evaluate and Improve Strategy
And of course, regularly assess your social media performance against your KPIs. Analyze which content types and posting times are most effective. You can also use A/B testing to experiment with different content approaches and see what works best.
Businesses should also pay attention to audience feedback and comments. Address questions, and concerns, and engage in conversations. Analyzing your competitors’ social media presence is also beneficial to gain insights into what’s working in your industry.
Adjust your strategy based on the data and insights you gather. If certain tactics are not delivering the desired results, be willing to pivot and try new approaches.
Social media trends that businesses need to look out for
Getting into social media marketing for business also means you have to keep your eyes and ears open for new trends. These are essential for any business or professional who wants to remain competitive and effectively engage with their audience.
Social media trends are constantly evolving, and you have to keep up. Here are some of the trends that businesses need to look out for in 2023 and beyond.
1. Short-form videos are dominating
Video content, especially short-form videos, remains a major trend. Short-form videos on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are particularly popular, and one of the reasons why this type of content is gaining traction and receiving better engagement in most cases.
2. Ephemeral or fleeting content
Ephemeral content, such as Stories on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, continues to thrive. This temporary or fleeting content creates a sense of urgency and encourages daily engagement from your audience. Businesses will be using more of these for their social media marketing.
3. Social commerce growth
Social media platforms are increasingly integrating e-commerce features, particularly TikTok and Instagram. These allow users to shop directly on the platform, which means social commerce is growing. Because of this, businesses will need to optimize their profiles for shopping and explore advertising opportunities to drive sales.
4. The rise of AI-generated content and tools
AI-powered tools have taken the world by storm. AI tools like ChatGPT are being used to summarize or generate content. Meanwhile, businesses and professionals are also using AI platforms or AI analytics tools to monitor conversations, track brand mentions, and provide personalized customer support.
5. Voice search and Voice assistants
Voice-activated devices like Siri and Alexa are becoming more common in households. This means the rise of voice search, and businesses who are not optimizing content for voice search will miss a lot of opportunities.
6. Sustainability and CSR
Brands that align with sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) resonate with modern consumers who care about environmental and social issues. Businesses need to show their values and how they’re giving back to the community or helping the environment.
7. Creativity and Authenticity
Authenticity and creativity continue to be key factors in capturing audience attention and trust. Consumers nowadays are attuned to authenticity, and they know when businesses are genuine or are only faking it. This relates to the sustainability and CSR efforts of brands as well.
8. Social SEO
Social SEO is the practice of optimizing your social media pages and content to help people find your brand on social platforms. As social media grows, businesses need to add SEO elements like captions, alt-text and closed captions to their posts to help their potential audience and customers find them.
9. The power of content creators
Content creators have the power nowadays. According to CrowdRiff, 87% of consumers trust reviews and recommendations from family and friends who received a free brand experience, and 71% still trust bloggers, vloggers, or social media stars who have gotten the same treatment.
10. Social customer care
More and more businesses are also utilizing social media to provide customer care or support. Social customer care is a good element of social media marketing for businesses. 67% of users have contacted brands at least once digitally through social media, and it is a waste of opportunity to not interact with these messages. This includes answering questions, providing after-sales support, asking for feedback, upselling, and more.
At the end of the day, social media is versatile and dynamic, doing wonders for businesses and individuals smart enough to leverage it.
If you need more help with social media marketing for business, Marketing Experts PH can give you a hand. Talk to us now and find out how we can help with your social media efforts.
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