Back in the day, traditional marketing efforts might have won over the crowd. You may have even been able to get away without an online marketing strategy! However, in today’s digital age, not having a marketing strategy can immensely hurt your business.

In North America alone, over 70% of the population has at least one social networking profile! That’s a huge demographic you could be missing out on! This fact alone proves why your social media strategy cannot solely rely on having just an online presence. Brands today must focus on social media marketing strategies that optimize not only brand awareness but also customer engagement.

Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media is a beast of its own. We know how overwhelming this can seem, especially if your business is new to the world wide web of digital marketing. Don’t fret! We’ve come up with 6 easy tips on how to create and implement a one-of-kind social media marketing strategy that will not only scare away the competition but will drive results.

Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy That Aligns With Your Goals

Posting on social media for the sake of posting won’t get you anywhere. First and foremost, you must define exactly what you want to achieve as the result of your marketing efforts. Defining your brand’s goals is a very crucial part of your marketing strategy. Regardless of if it’s a marketing strategy or an overall business strategy, identifying and setting your goals should always be the first step in strategy creation. Social media should be no exception to this rule. Hoping to increase sales by a tenfold within a week’s time is not realistic. Neither is hoping to gain a million Facebook page likes within a day. With this being said, you must define goals that are both realistic and achievable. With attainable goals, you’re more likely to stick to your strategy and hopefully succeed in meeting your goals. Not sure which goals you want your brand to achieve online? No worries. We’ve come up with a list of some common ones:

• Increase brand awareness
• Improve ROI
• Generate customer/brand loyalty
• Increase sales, downloads, conversions, and/or leads
• Increase customer service efforts and overall customer satisfaction

Research and Identify Your Target Audience

Just like traditional marketing, when it comes to social media marketing, it is just as important to know and define your target market. Understanding your audience is essential when it comes to achieving your brand’s social media goals. The world is so big and tailoring your marketing efforts to the general public won’t get you the results you strive for. Think about focusing on a segmented market niche. Once you’ve identified who it is that you want to target, conduct some research and learn more about your customers. Knowing more about your customers will help you when it comes to targeting them online. Some questions to ask yourself can include:

• What social media platforms do they use?
• Where are they geographically located?
• What age group, gender, and demographic should I focus on?

Take a Look at Your Competition

Before you start exhausting your creative juices, it is important to explore your competition. Take a look at major competitors in your industry and see what they are doing. Jot down notes to see what works and what doesn’t, and analyze what really makes them successful. When entering any industry, it’s important to see who you’re up against. Rather than stealing their ideas, focus on some of the major takeaways. Learn from their successes and their failures so that you have an idea of what to expect when you implement similar aspects into your marketing strategy.

Develop and Create Engaging Online Content

Beyond setting goals, creating good quality content is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. When it comes to content, it is important to make sure that content you share and create on your brand’s social media pages are up-to-date, relevant, and relate to your company’s goals and brand identity. According to Sprout Social, over 40% of users admit to unfollowing brands online that they felt posted too many advertisements or overshared too much irrelevant content. You want to create content that drives and facilitates engagement with your audience. When you create content that resonates with your audience, they are more likely to share your content and facilitate a word of mouth experience.

Engage With Your Audience

Social media platforms provide a space online that allows individuals to share content, converse with one another, and facilitate discussions on topics that are important to them. Therefore, networking and interacting with your audience is an important part of social media marketing. Customers often follow and post on their favorite corporate social media pages. Listen to what your customers are saying on these platforms. Their feedback and comments aid as a tool for your marketing efforts! By monitoring the engagement on your page, you’ll gain useful insight to the mind of the consumer and you’ll get a better understanding of what is working for your brand and what areas need to be improved on. Moreover, be sure to review your analytics and conduct research to see when your audience is online and when are the best times to post content.

Track and Measure Your Efforts, Results, and Metrics

Lastly, results are a key component when it comes to tailoring and tweaking your social media marketing strategy. Without monitoring results, you’ll never know how well your strategy is being executed and how close you are to achieving your goals. Keep an eye on the content you post and review your analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to see what is working for your business and which areas of your strategy need to be improved.

Contact us

Are you interested in developing a social media marketing strategy for your brand? Contact Quick Marketing Group, your #1 social media management firm at 1-800-807-8784 or visit our website to learn more about all the social media management services we offer.

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