As a business owner, Sales Director, or Marketing Executive, you are no doubt aware of the transformative nature of the internet and social media to our everyday lives. While it is wonderful to be able to connect with potential customers and engaging with them online, you may be missing out on potential sales and brand loyalty if you aren’t careful.
To ensure you get the most from your internet and social media marketing efforts it is important to adopt a strategic approach with clear goals in mind. With this in mind, here are some essential tips on how to market your business online through social media.
Find Your Target Audience
If you’re looking to grow your business, it’s important to understand who your audience is, where they are, and what they want. With this information you can craft marketing messages that will resonate with this group. For example, if your target audience is millennials then it may be a good idea to focus on creating content that is relevant to them.
In 2020, 92% of consumers use social media to research products and services. Furthermore, 77% of users prefer to learn about products and services through others’ experiences vs. marketing materials (e.g., advertisements).
This preference for learning about products and services through others’ experiences is what makes social media such a powerful platform for marketing. If you can get people to engage with and share your content, you can bet that thousands of others will be doing the same. In this way, the amount of traffic and potential customers that you can gain is virtually unlimited.
Consumers On The Move
With so much content being created and shared every day it can be difficult to stay relevant in today’s ever-changing world. This is especially true when it comes to digital marketing, where businesses can be quickly drowned out by the next big trend. To ensure that your brand’s voice, content, and offers stick out among your competitors, you need to ensure that your marketing is always relevant, fresh, and catchy. To do this you need to look for ways to stand out from the crowd, and one of the best ways to do this is through consistent and frequent content creation.
While it may be tempting to rest on your laurels once your content starts working well, content that is successful tends to become redundant quickly. If your content strategy and tactics are working but you feel that your audience is starting to grow a little stale, it may be a good idea to switch gears and try something new. You don’t want to be doing the same thing that everyone else is doing anyway, otherwise you’ll find yourself left behind.
Content Is King
Creating quality content that is both engaging and informative is the key to dominating the social media sphere. In an ideal world, every piece of content that you create will be both interesting and helpful to your target audience. However, in the real world, this is often not the case. In fact, many businesses have found that educating and entertaining their audience through content can be more beneficial than trying to sell them a product.
Quality content that you create will also make your business stand out among the millions of other brands and companies on social media. Having a unique, interesting, and informative voice can help you gain the attention of an audience that may not be familiar with your brand.
Many businesses have fallen into the trap of simply replying with “Thanks!” to every comment they receive on their blog. While this may seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, it can quickly turn into an irritating routine for the reader. There are much better ways to engage with your audience and find the real value in their comments. Instead of simply thanking them for their input, you can use their feedback to improve your blog post or social media campaign.
Think Long-Term
If your business is focused on the short term, you may find that your marketing efforts are not working as efficiently as you want them to. Furthermore, you may be tempted to try a new strategy soon after seeing some initial success with a current one. However, this is a bad idea. You should always aim to produce quality content that will be valuable to your target audience long after your current campaign ends. To do this, you need to develop a content strategy that will last you for the long haul.
Quality content that you create will gradually build up a reputation for being an authoritative voice in your chosen field. As people begin to believe that you are an expert in your field, they may start listening to you and considering you when it comes to deciding what products and services to buy. Your job now is to prove them right.
Measure And Review
To ensure that your efforts are paying off and that you are improving your results with each new project you undertake it is important to measure and review your progress periodically. The best way to do this is by identifying specific metrics that you can use to determine if your content strategy is working or needs to be adjusted. For example, if you are interested in seeing how effective your videos are in attracting and retaining customers, you can measure the following metrics:
- Views
- Shares
- Comments
- Likes
- Videos watched to completion
- Avg. time played
- Percentage of people who liked the video
By tracking these metrics you can see how effective your content strategy is and determine if you should continue with this approach or switch gears and try something new.
Focus On The User
The focus of your content strategy should always be on the user. This means that you should focus on creating content that is both interesting and helpful to your target audience. If you want to succeed on social media platforms like YouTube, you need to ensure that each video you create provides value to your audience. To do this, it is important to consider what they want and need. For example, if you are creating a cooking show for women, you may want to consider the tools that they are most likely to use to find and follow recipes, as well as the kinds of foods that they enjoy preparing.
To create an effective digital marketing strategy, it is important to adopt an approach that is both user-centered and data-driven. This means that you should be thinking about what the consumer wants and needs, how to provide value to consumers, and how to track the results of your efforts. This three-step process will put you on the right track to dominating the digital sphere and gaining the attention of more potential customers than ever before.