Social Media Strategies for Marketing

Did you know that the key ingredient for effective social media marketing is having a strategy? 

Without a robust strategy that allows you to understand your goals, target audience, and interests, it’s almost impossible to achieve your target social media goals. 

Many people across the globe use social media, and therefore, it’s one of the best channels to generate sales, enhance brand awareness, and build brand trust. 

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the benefits of social media marketing and the best strategies and examples you need to implement.  

Whether you’re new to social media marketing or just want to double-check your 2023 priorities, this article has got you covered. 

Why Should You Market on Social Media? 

According to Statista, 59% of the world’s population are social media users. With its versatility and widespread use, social media is one of the most essential and efficient channels for marketing your business. Here are reasons why you should market your business on social media.

• It increases brand awareness. Social media marketing boosts your visibility and lets you reach a broad audience. To increase your brand awareness, you’ll need to define and develop a social media marketing strategy for brand awareness. When you have a specific strategy, you can determine the best social media channel that fits your business needs. 
• It helps you build relationships with your target audience. If you connect with your consumers, your business is bound to grow immensely on all levels. Many businesses create online-friendly relationships with their followers to create trust and customer satisfaction.
• It increases your overall ROI. Social media helps you attract potential paying customers and, at the same time, keep them engaged. Marketing or advertising on social media channels increases your return on investments as the marketing cost of these social channels is often less than the return. 
• It helps you generate and nurture your leads. Creating meaningful conversations and engagements builds credibility and relationships with potential customers. Promoting your products or services on different social media channels lets your audience engage and interact with your business. 
• Your competition is on social media. Regardless of your target market or the industry you’re in, there are big odds that your competitors are already involved in social media marketing. Therefore, there’s an opportuning for your brand to succeed on social channels. Furthermore, your potential customers could already be interacting with your competition as we speak. 

Marketing tactics for social media that you should be implementing

In today’s world, having a social media page without clear marketing strategies is almost pointless. The key ingredient for successful social media marketing is having an efficient strategy. Here are social media marketing ideas and tactics that you should be implementing:

1. Create an efficient content marketing strategy.

Creating and curating engaging content that resonates with your audience helps you attract potential customers. Quality is key, and content marketing is no exception.

2. Set clear goals and KPIs. 

Every effective and successful marketing strategy has clearly defined goals and objectives. Ensure you have SMART goals that let you track your campaign’s success and prove the benefits of your investment. 

3. Define your target audience.

Ensure you define your buyer personas and target audience by understanding the type and characteristics of your target customers. Using demographic data, observable patterns, or psychographic data helps you have a mental picture of the customers who are likely to buy from you. Using a customer data platform will enable you to collect first-party data on your customers to provide them with a personalized marketing experience.

4. Focus on social media channels that best fit your strategy

Your business can be on only some other social media platform. Again, understanding your target audience comes in handy when choosing the best social media platform. 

Social media trends are dynamic, and identifying the channels that best fit your business goals will have a high ROI.  

5. Research your competitors. 

Track and analyze your biggest competitor activities to know which channels and what kind of posts are bringing the best results. 

Pro Tip: If you find out that your competitors are more active on one channel than others, it’s an excellent opportunity to reach your underserved audience. Therefore, consider leveraging the untapped opportunities. 

6. Engage with your followers.

Break the traditional views customers have that you’re only trying to sell to them. Create personalized customer experience through chatbots. Your engagement with your audience is what drives visibility and drives sales.  

7. Test, measure, and improve your strategies.

Each social media marketing campaign should be assessed, tracked, and measured. It’s the only way you’ll understand what’s working and what’s not. Based on the insights you receive, you can modify your social media marketing strategy and make data-driven decisions. 

8. Establish a social media marketing budget.

Allocating the right marketing budget is crucial for the success of your social media marketing campaign. When you leverage your social media marketing budget with the right strategy, you’ll have the most cost-effective way to reach your target audience. 

Examples of Social Media Marketing Strategies 

Are you looking for new social media marketing strategies, or do you just want to adjust your strategy? Social media marketing requires a unique set of skills that help you understand your audience’s needs. I’ve put together five social media marketing strategies examples to help you get the most out of your social media marketing campaigns in the future:

1. Influencer marketing done right.

Influencer marketing is a crucial element of any social media marketing campaign. Enrolling people with an already established audience and credibility to discuss or mention your brand helps you reach an audience that could have been otherwise hard to reach. 

2. Get your community involved.

Use user-generated content (UGC) to establish social proof and engage with your audience. For example, Facebook and Instagram stories are great places to share your user-generated content as often as you receive it.  

3. Run Social media contests and giveaways

Social media contests are not only great for growth and engagement, but they also help you attract new followers and motivate them to engage with your brand. Well-run social media contests provide value to contestants in exchange for their activity and engagement. 

4. The virtue of humor

Laughter is the ultimate marketing tool. From captioned memes and funny Instagram hashtags to TikTok videos, humorous marketing brightens our days and leaves unforgettable memories.

However, consuming humorous content is easier than creating it. And you should create humorous content that fits your brand and appeals to your audience. 

5. Hold live sessions

Holding live sessions should be part of your growth and engagement strategy. You can invite opinion leaders and industry-relevant guest speakers to attract a large audience—people like asking questions and receiving responses in real-time. For example, Facebook has a live video feature that you can promote and boost, and once you’re done with the video, you can share and promote it repeatedly. 

Wrapping it Up

Whether your business is a start-up looking to gain popularity or has dominated the industry for generations, social media marketing can never be overlooked. 

The idea of creating a compelling social media marketing strategy is attracting potential customers before they connect to your business. And the strategy you use to attract customers should focus on connecting with them. Without this connection, your relationship with your customers could be short-lived. 

With approximately 4.74 billion global users on social media channels, if you haven’t created your social media marketing strategy for 2022, there is no better time to start. 

We hope this post inspires you to draft a robust social media marketing strategy that best fits your business needs.

Natasha Merchant , 27 December 2022