In the current world of digital dominance, almost 9 out of 10 marketers would agree that social media exposure has helped grow exponentially. Therefore, if your business is not reaping the benefits of social media and does not have a solid social media presence, it’s the equivalent of you going to a posh business meeting and taking out your flip phone to make a call.

We’ve finally reached a point where more than half the world is connected through social media, which has brought about an urgent need to revolutionize the way businesses conduct their marketing efforts. That is why having a foolproof social marketing strategy is crucial for any and every business.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

The first social media rule that every online business should take note of is that no matter what you sell online and who you sell it to, if you use social media as a marketing tool, it can help you grow your brand and fatten your wallet too.

Social media marketing is the marketing technique of using social networks and their various applications to spread awareness about their brand and promote their products. Social media marketing strategies usually circle around a company trying to establish a social media presence on all the major platforms.

But how do you land upon a foolproof social media marketing strategy that can help your company achieve its desired goals? If you want to start your social media marketing efforts, we have some of the best cutting-edge tactics to guide you through.

How To Come Up With A Successful Social Media Strategy 

Here are some of the ways to help you in coming up with a social marketing strategy that will blow your competitors away in the online marketing arena:

• Layout your objectives and goals correctly
• Learn all you need to know about your audience
• Run contests on social media to understand user mindset
• Craft out your social media content carefully
• Keep the sales tactics to a minimum
• Take advantage of every bit of video content that you can get your hands on
• Use mind-blowing pictures and illustrations
• Form a connection with your target audience
• Learn about the right social media marketing tools for your business and use them to their maximum potential
• Promotion is key

Why You Need to Follow A Sound Social Marketing Strategy in 2020

#1 Social Media Posts Generate Targeted Traffic

No matter what industry your product or services categorized under, a substantial portion of your customers and leads come from social. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 68% of American adults are Facebook users. The same research found that among 18 to 24-year-olds, 78% use Instagram and 45% are on Twitter. Meanwhile, among Americans 65 and older, 37% are social media users.

Having access to a large customer base helps your company boost traffic, particularly if its some fresh and new content. When you post a new blog post on your website, it might take time for Google to get you the desired traction, which means that your content only reaches a handful of your target audience.

However, when you boost your content with the power of social media, you provide the opportunity for the general public to find your web content and click through to your site. Since social media posts are usually clicked on by people who are primarily interested in the offerings, it typically translates into a targeted audience. And as you know, targeted customers not only boost your organic traffic numbers but also bring in the visitors you want to attract.

#2 It Helps Your SEO Efforts

Most search engines come with web crawlers that know which pages consistently bring in traffic and which ones are merely floating in the vast ocean of online content. Even though you may have a killer content strategy that is fit enough to push you on the frontline of SERPs, driving traffic to your optimized pages through social media will make them climb faster.

A lot of times, sharing content on social media doesn’t have to be complicated and time-consuming. Simply resharing your old content with new updates on the particular subject or resharing evergreen content will help your website get more visibility than your competitors and drive traffic to your site.

It’s recommended that you share each of your old, evergreen posts at least once a month. And it doesn’t really have to be as time-intensive a task as it seems to be. With scheduling tools available for all the major social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can set the plan for the entire month all at once, and you’re done.

#3 Social Media Marketing helps You Understand Your Audience Better

One of the primary reasons why social media sites like Instagram and Twitter make for useful marketing tools is because of the interaction they let you have with your customer base. By only looking at their posts, reading their tweets and status updates, you can gain immense insight into their lives and behaviors.

Being able to observe your target audience’s online behavior additionally helps you answer some critical marketing questions like:

• What kind of products are they buying and why?
• What sort of hobbies do they have?
• What kind of posts do they love to share with their friends and followers?
• What are the top websites that they visit?

Getting the answer to even some of these questions have obvious marketing benefits. When you understand what goes on in your target consumer’s mind, you can correctly assess their needs ahead of time and cater to them accordingly. It further helps you identify customer pain points, improve sales conversions, and, eventually, refine your product strategy.

#4 Having An Active Social Media Presence Helps You Connect With Your Audience

The first thing you have to understand about social media marketing is that your audience does not see social media networks such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter as marketing machines. This is where most companies tend to make a mistake because by instinctively adopting a hard sell approach, they turn customers away with constant discount offer codes, new product announcements, and customer reviews. 

However, customers want authentic engagement from companies, and definitely not an aggressive sales pitch. Once you start seeing social media as a tool to connect with your target audience, it can transform your brand in their eyes. You’ll build connections and relationships with industry leaders and influencers, providing great stories for brand promotion. In no time, you’ll transform into a community.

These tactics may seem futile at first, but they come with some serious ROI. If you follow the best practices on social media marketing, you’ll get a ton of exposure, which will bring in more leads for your business and generate higher revenues.

#5 Social Media Marketing Will Definitely Get You More Sales

If anyone comes up to you and asks why social media marketing is essential, there’s just a straightforward answer: it drives mad sales. In today’s digitally crazed world, about 70 percent of all business-to-consumer marketers claim to have acquired a large chunk of their consumer base from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. 

Such a result is not surprising if you stay in front of your customer base at all times, because then users will eventually end up purchasing your products when the need arises. But you have to understand that social media marketing has more to it than just increasing your brand awareness.

With the help of social media marketing tools, you can even influence customer buying decisions at multiple points along the sales funnel, like answering customer questions and addressing pain points, incentivizing buyers with coupon codes, etc. Therefore, your sales go up eventually, one way or another.

#6 Having The Right Social Marketing Strategy Can Help You Slay The Competition

The already overflowing world of social media can feel quite intimidating if you’re new to it. Most companies usually start operations with a token social media presence, and in many industries, using multiple social media networks is the norm. So what do SMEs do to get noticed by giants like Facebook and Twitter?

While bigger brands tend to focus on multiple channels to drive sales and generate revenues in every way they see possible, SMEs (small and medium enterprises) are better off with just a single stable social media channel that they follow religiously. 

If you can find a particular social media channel that has been relatively abandoned by your competition, take the time to develop your voice and strategy, post regularly, and respond to messages and comments promptly on the same. This way, you’ll be able to build an audience that your competitors cannot match, even if they have spent more years on social media than you might have.

#7 Social Media Is Key To Stellar Customer Service

Although businesses may have taken customer support for granted in the past, a quick customer response time isn’t optional anymore. If a customer complains about a problem with your product or service, they expect you to solve them immediately. But the problem is that very few companies are fulfilling those expectations.

A study conducted by Sprout Social found that customers tend to seek a response from social media companies within four hours. Despite that, the average response time is currently 10 hours. Remember, even the minutest irritation for your customers can affect your sales and profits big time. 

Studies have even shown that customers are willing to also pay a premium price for products and services when brands respond to their problems and queries within a matter of minutes or hours. Therefore, having a strong social media presence lets you keep customers happy and keep your public image positive. 

In Conclusion

Social Media marketing can seem like a lot of hard work, but you have to realize that it’s benefits are quite hard to ignore. If you don’t take your social marketing strategy seriously, you’ll undoubtedly miss out on leads, customers, online visibility, and, eventually, record sales.

No marketing tool or technique plays a critical role in driving sales to your business than social media. Having regular and periodic interactions with followers, journalists, thought leaders, and taste-makers can not only diversify your profile but also improve your public image and give your brand the sales it deserves.

Feel free to reach me via Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter |  Skype 

Posts from partners