Why do you need a social media marketing strategy?
Why do you need a social media marketing strategy? In 2021, this is a question that is vaguely answered. The reality is, the digital marketing landscape has changed and is shifting towards social media. There are several benefits to having a social media marketing strategy, but first, let’s look at some statistics that reflect the true power of social media marketing:
- Currently, over 3 billion people are on social media as users.
- Facebook is the most widely used platform with over 2 billion active monthly users.
- The average user spends 2 hours a day on social media
These numbers on the surface seem big, however; they only paint part of a picture as to the true power of social media marketing and why it’s important to have a social media marketing strategy.
Oftentimes, however, we find a lot of business owners are using social media with no goal or plan. Two reasons why we see business owners using social media with no goal or plan are:
1) Short term ROI
2) Saving money
Here’s what we mean:
- Short Term ROI:
A lot of small to medium-sized businesses live in the world of short-term ROI. This is not by choice, it’s by being forced to. Small to medium-sized businesses are constantly focused on making the most amount of money in the least amount of time possible.
2. Saving Money
Small to medium-sized businesses are constantly met with the idea of saving money wherever possible. This could mean spending less on equipment, paying employees less, doing a lot of work themselves, and even cutting back on social media efforts.
With short-term ROI and saving money being the focus for small to medium-sized businesses, it becomes clear as to why social media takes a backseat, and the small to medium-sized businesses that do try don’t have a plan.
It doesn’t have to be that way for small to medium-sized businesses though. There are so many great ways to use social media to really accomplish whatever goal you want to achieve for your business, but you must develop a social media marketing strategy.
But why do you need a social media marketing strategy? To really understand the scope of social media marketing and why having a strategy is so important, we first need to explore what goals you have for your business.
Some common goals we see small to medium-sized business owners use social media marketing for are:
- Lead generation
- Increasing sales
- Hiring
- Public relations
Now that we understand some common goals businesses seek to achieve with social media marketing, we can begin to paint a clearer picture of why a social media marketing plan is important.
With some of these goals in mind, let’s go through each one and develop a strategy so we can paint a clearer picture as to why it’s important to develop a social media marketing strategy.
Why you need a social media marketing strategy for lead generation:
Social Media has become an important marketing tool for businesses to use in their lead generation efforts in 2021 as it comes with several benefits.
For starters, social media lead generation is very cost-effective. With social media lead generation, you’ll pay a fraction of the cost that traditional marketing has to offer with the added benefit of reaching more people and reaching a more targeted audience (people interested in your product or service.)
There are two ways you can operate social media advertising: Organic branding and sponsored branding.
Organic branding: With organic branding, you can build an audience and generate leads through consistent content creation without the use of paid ads. This works exceptionally well for companies in the service space. Following this strategy allows you to build an audience organically and because you are posting content that is attractive to your audience, the clients from your page will be highly interested in what you sell.
Sponsored branding: With sponsored branding, you take great pieces of content on social media and sponsor that piece of content to target an audience that you want to sell to. This can cost anywhere from $100 – $500 a week and can result in a targeted reach of 1,000 – 50,000. With a sponsored piece of content, you can reach more people with less money than you can through other platforms like Google.
Additionally, you can utilize a social media marketing strategy to build trust with a new audience as well as maintain the current trust you have built. For example, let’s say you own a restaurant, and you want to improve your social media management. Every time someone goes to your restaurant to eat, they leave a review, post a picture of your food, and talk about how great their experience was. Then you take everything they post and share it on your social media pages. Now, every time someone searches for your restaurant, and they are met with your social media, they are going to have more trust in your restaurant.
The third piece to social media marketing as a form of lead generation results in higher conversion rates. Touching back on building trust, with a social media marketing strategy, you can increase your conversion rates by becoming more customer-centric in your approach which leads to higher sales and even more referrals!
Social media marketing strategy: Now that we have covered lead generation as a goal, let’s create a strategy so we can better understand the importance of having a social media marketing strategy.
To generate leads using organic branding, sponsored branding, and trust-building, we first need to develop a pool of content to be posted. That is, we need to develop content that can be posted consistently. Pieces of content like pictures, videos, testimonials, and reviews.
Once you begin posting consistently, then you take a piece of content you have posted (our team recommends using your highest performing one) and put marketing dollars behind that piece of content to get it in front of the right people.
Now that you have sponsored content and supporting content to showcase your page, culture, etc. It’s time to do some brand management to continue building trust and maintain the trust that has been and is being built.
All three of these in a social media marketing strategy, when followed consistently, ultimately lead to higher conversion rates and lead generation!
Increasing sales:
Another common goal a lot of small to medium-sized businesses use social media for is increasing sales, or more relevant to marketing language, social selling. This is the case for businesses that sell products like food, beverages, even electronic devices.
Increasing sales are like lead generation, however, think of lead generation as one-way communication whereas sales are two-way communication. That is, when you are generating leads, you are sending leads to a landing page or a website where the customer puts their contact information in a landing page or form on a website for you to reach out to them. With sales, there is a communication process that happens between you (or sales rep) and the potential customer.
Social media marketing strategy: You need to be creative for your content and social media marketing campaigns to work properly and now that we know the similarities and difference between sales and lead generation, let’s develop a strategy that could increase sales!
For example, you can post engaging material on the platform which will either result in a comment or contact from one of your prospects through private messenger chat functionality built into each account. Once they’ve contacted you via Facebook Messenger (or any other social media platform that you are using) it’s time that we redirect them off this site so as not to limit their ability to talk about anything other than buying.
When creating engaging content, we always recommend using video over pictures as studies show that videos are more engaging and result in higher sales. We also recommend phone calls and video chats when communicating over platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook messenger or even text messages as a phone call or video message are more personable because people can see and hear exactly what is being said whereas relying entirely upon written words alone may lead some audience members down false paths – but don’t worry: both options can work. What matters most is that you are creating and consistently posting engaging content to get prospects talking.
After you get the customer engaged and talking about their needs or wants, it’s time to ask for the order! You can even get customers to leave reviews and testimonials either written or on video!
The reason why this strategy works well is because now you have a well-fed machine of consistent content produced by you and your team, as well as content coming in from happy customers.
Hiring:
Let’s face it, the job market today is wide open. Which is why you need a social media marketing strategy so you can stand out from the competition.
This means earning your employees’ attention and work is competitive. So why do you need a social media marketing strategy? Simple – to earn your potential hires attention. You must stand out
Younger employees are more interested in company culture, here are some statistics to showcase what we mean:
Job sites like Glassdoor surveyed over 5,000 adults in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany and found that over 50% valued work culture over salary (the exact number 56%)
In the U.S. alone, over 62% of workers 45 and younger said they valued company culture over a high income.
Furthermore, Glassdoor, the same company that conducted the previous two studies listed, conducted another study showcasing that 73% of workers would not apply to a company that did not align their values with their own.
Additionally, two-thirds of employees said they would not still be with their current company if it wasn’t for their culture.
What does this mean for you and your business if you’re a business owner or high-level executive looking to attract the right employees through social media? It means you need to showcase your company culture!
Think about it, when you sell a product or service, you are filling a niche. The niche you sell to become your loyal customers. The same works with your employees, when you showcase your company culture, you attract a certain employee.
The employees that you attract to your company through your culture lower your turnover rate, become more invested in the growth of your company, and increase new hire rate because they will share their work experience with friends that may also be interested in working!
Social media marketing strategy: So, how do you develop a social media marketing strategy that attracts the right employee to your company? For this, feel free to get creative!
Social media marketing is a powerful tool to attract the best employees, but it can be difficult for employers if they do not know-how. There are many ways that you could begin developing your social media strategy and one of those would lie within allowing employees to showcase themselves on their stories or experiences working with companies as well as create branding material through sponsored posts targeted towards people with similar interests.
This process which we refer to collectively as creating a lookalike audience in the digital realm – this means targeting certain lifestyle choices such as fitness enthusiasts; moviegoers who enjoy indie cinema over Hollywood blockbusters every now again; music listeners that prefer alternative rock tunes instead of pop ballads from Ed Sheeran.
Now that you have developed content that you can share and showcase your culture, redirect applications to an interview and select the best candidates.
Tip: You can even get creative by remarketing, creating entire campaigns and more!
Public Relations:
What makes social media so powerful is the connectivity of everything. Being able to connect and share ideas, experiences, and events with anyone, anywhere, and at any time. This is especially true if you are a small to medium-sized or even a large company looking to showcase PR efforts!
Events, charities, philanthropic outreaches and more all can be done through social media. Ultimately, this leads to an increase in lead generating, hiring, sales, and just improving your company’s digital footprint all together.
Social media marketing strategy: If your goal is to improve your PR efforts, what social media marketing strategy can work to optimize the reach?
Firstly, pick an event that you want to show case and make a content plan around that event. Pictures and videos before, during and after the event are always helpful.
Second, take the best highlights and put them in a video. Then, post that video in the form of a sponsored ad and run that on the social media platform you would like to run it on targeting the right people.
With this strategy, you will be able to target new clients or audiences (depending on your goal) and if you are looking for new hires this also showcases your company culture.
So, why do you need a social media marketing strategy?
All in all, the importance of a social media marketing strategy and why you need one is dependent on your goals for your business. At the end of the day, having a plan allows you to scale faster and know if you are heading in the right direction.
