Social media marketing refers to marketing techniques that target your key audience on social networks and social applications. It is the use of social media websites and social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin to market a company's products and services. Also known as "digital marketing" and "e-marketing," social media marketing has purpose-built data analytics tools that allow marketers to track how successful their efforts are.
The aim of social media marketing is to create brand awareness by communicating effectively with your target audience, and in turn giving them the opportunity to engage with you and other brand advocates. It is relevant at the top of the marketing funnel, and is effective by creating shareable content that is consistent throughout all of your networks.
It is important because it creates awareness for your business. The unique aspect of social media is that it allows for immediate interaction and customer feedback, so is a fantastic way to engage with your audience and use this communication to improve your product or service. This also means you can develop a stronger bond with your existing customers as well as find and connect with new ones.
It is important for any business to be involved in social networking as if you aren’t, your competitor certainly is. By understanding your audience you can create content tailored to their needs which will help you communicate your brand’s values and stand out in the marketplace.
Because social media is a tool to create your brand’s narrative, there is no one perfect social media strategy that will work for all startups in different industries. You have to develop an online presence that reflects your brand, and implement a strategy that best suited to your business’s needs and goals.
Finding out who your audience consists of, what they like and their social media habits will inform the decision making for your strategy. You’ll need to know what platforms to use and develop a voice that your customers will be reassured by and relate to. By studying your audience you can create content that they enjoy, and make sure it appears in the right places at the right time. Investing time in understanding your customers means you can focus your efforts to meet their needs, and produce good results at a low cost.
Social media marketing is very useful for startups, as it is an effective yet affordable way to advertise yourself and begin growing awareness of your brand. You don’t need to be a well-established company to produce content that is effective at informing people about your industry. From your inception, you can begin to foster an online presence that reflects your brand’s values and produces relevant and engaging content. By being active on different platforms, you can attract and retain a clearly defined audience.
Social media gives you the opportunity to be creative in the ways you educate your audience about what to expect from your brand and what you represent. From day one you can use these tools to move them through the sales funnel and accelerate growth, building loyalty in existing customers and help new ones find the value in your business.
One of the most frequently asked questions in regards to social media, the truth is that it has both a direct and indirect effect that is impossible to measure perfectly. However the same can be said about much of PR strategy, for that is because the aim of PR is not to increase short term impulse buys, to form long-lasting relationships with consumers who hold your business in great standing, which in turn increases sales.
When it does come to measuring a business’s ROI it begins with setting conversion goals and then tracking them. You have to be strict and consistent to reach them and stay on target. It is possible to assign monetary value to each conversion and then compare these to incoming traffic and conversion numbers.
Keeping in mind the difficulty of tracking ROI of social media, a proper and consistent social media strategy must reflect the unique objectives and goals of your business.
The advantages of a social media marketing campaign is that you are using an essential tool to get an edge over your competition. Not only is this a critical asset, it also has relatively low costs and requires few resources to do.
With it you can establish your presence across social platforms, build brand awareness, attract potential customers and solidify relationships with existing ones. You can also create backlinks to your website which improves its conversion rate.
By having a consistent and engaging online presence you can build trust in your website, drive more traffic to it and boost your search engine rankings. It helps to deliver your overall PR efforts quickly and with ease, as your strategy can also be adjusted when the unpredictable happens.
At PRLab, we always deliver a completely customized social media marketing plan for your business that is tailored to your business specifications. There isn’t one single method that works for all companies, and your audience, your values, your brand’s message and your goals will all go into calculating the most effective strategy for you.
At the start of each campaign, we will get together with you and mark down your goals and what it is you want to achieve. We then draft a proposal to see if it fits with your style of communication, and if so we execute the plan by providing strategic messages across all the platforms necessary to reach your target audience.
By working with PRLab to implement a social media marketing strategy, you will expand your brand awareness, elevate interest towards your products and services, and generally build your trust, reputation and authority in your industry.