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Social Media Marketing
According to GlobalWebIndex, 54% use social media to research products. In 2020, the number of new users joining social media every single day was about a whopping 1.3 million. It makes sense to leverage social media marketing to generate new leads, but are your efforts really effective?
For social media strategy success, you can't just existence of a social media account or buy untargeted paid ads. It is imperative to take measured steps in the right direction to ensure returns. Let’s talk about what are the best strategies for social media marketing, and how to go about designing an effective campaign.
The Six-Step Social Media Strategy Process
Step 1: Understand Your Expectations + Align them with Business Goals
What do you expect from your social media marketing strategy? Are you targeting new audiences or focusing on customer retention? Do you want to increase brand awareness and popularity? You need to have total clarity on the things you’re trying to get from the marketing campaigns and ensure these expectations align well with your business goals.
For instance, if your business goal is to increase the visibility of a certain product in your healthcare market, it doesn’t make sense to set up a strategy that does not target titles within that field.
Step 2: Identify your Target Audience + Narrow Down your Target Channels
Based on your business goals and your product portfolio, you’ll need to identify who you want to target. Do you wish to increase awareness and visibility among a certain age group or demographic? Do you plan to advertise certain products to a certain demographic of people? This analysis of “who” will significantly reduce your efforts in the future, and ensure your efforts are not wasted on an audience that will never end up being attracted to your posts.
Next, you should figure out which target channels are best for the job. The purpose and the type of audience will largely dictate this decision, but there can also be other factors like budget and existing social media coverage. Is Tick Tock the right platform for your tech company? You need to build your distinct social media strategy; not just follow what your competition is doing.
Together, these two factors will help you narrow down your social media marketing strategy efforts to a specific group over a specific channel. This knowledge will also help you create tailor-made content that is suitable for the type of audience and your chosen channel(s).
Step 3: Establish KPIs that Align with Your Social Media Marketing Strategy + Business Goals
Key Performance Indicators such as tag performances, clicks, the ratio of clicks to conversion, landing page visits, etc. will help you study customer patterns in depth. This will give you an understanding of the elements of an effective social media marketing strategy that work, as well as those which are not yielding any returns.
These metrics must be in line with what your expectations are in step 1, and what your audience is as per step 2. For instance, if your goal is to advertise your new SaaS solution to a demographic of women aged 30 and above, your KPIs should measure the success rate of your strategy integrated into your chosen channel for this specific demographic. You can choose to measure additional metrics as well, but don’t forget to prioritize those which will inform you of the success and failure rates of your business goals and overall strategy.
Step 4: Post Relevant, Engaging, Value-Added Content
A social media marketing strategy may help you target specific customers, but it will never yield returns if the content you post does not align with your community. Whether you are advertising a new product or repositioning your brand on a global scale, consumers will only read posts that are relevant, to the point, and engaging.
Don’t bore them with what’s already done, marketing is less about following trends and more about thinking outside the box. Content that makes a reader understand something they didn’t already know, will immediately grab their attention and stay in their memory for a while.
Step 5: Plan Ahead + Schedule Your Posts
One of the key elements of an effective social media marketing strategy is timely, scheduled posts. Develop a schedule of the days and times to post, HubSpot provides data and best practices for a schedule you can follow and test on your own. Consistency of posts, cadence, and topics will create a significant impact and leave a positive, long-lasting impression on the minds of readers.
Step 6: Track + Adapt
You must constantly track your KPIs, update them wherever necessary, and track all performance data relevant to your social media marketing strategy. This will ensure you do not waste resources waiting for returns on elements that are not working while giving you the knowledge to direct your efforts where they’re needed the most. Once you have all the data, you must modify and adapt your strategy and campaigns accordingly to ensure your efforts are not redundant at any point in time.
Social Media Marketing in Tech
You’ve probably noticed that there’s some work to be done to ensure you get the best out of your social media marketing strategy. However, it's important to recognize that in the technology space, it's even more important to show your brand and differentiation in the market through your social media messages and conversations. Each community you cultivate in your channels will come to you and stay with you if you provide unique insight and perspective on topics that are important to your readers. If you're an MSP or VAR; don't just report your manufacturer messages. Be authentic and build on your strategy as time, budget, and resources allow. As long as you set goals that are realistic, measurable, and actionable, and your channel of choice is backed by research, your social media marketing strategy will certainly be rewarding for your business.
