Social media marketing is a powerful way for all kinds and sizes of businesses to reach prospects and target audiences. There are over 3 billion people who use social media worldwide, so delivering the right message at the right time will be crucial for ensuring your social media marketing success. In a landscape where competition is continuing to grow, being present online and building a trustable digital estate are essential to remain competitive. Keeping all this in mind, how can you design an effective social media marketing plan that delivers results?
Social media marketing refers to using social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, to promote your brand and sell your products or services. While social media are a great opportunity to interact with your audience directly and establish a strong relationship with them, it’s also a great place to grow your business. However, to do that, you need to first understand where your users are present and what types of messages will best trigger their interest and engagement.
Before we dig deeper into the specifics of ‘how’ you should build your social media strategy, we need to segment where you can find the right audience first.
Audience: Generation X and Millennials
Users: 2.95 billion monthly active users
Industry Impact: B2C
Best for Brand awareness (Advertising)
As the largest social media platform, Facebook’s level of impact is invaluable for businesses reaching consumers, especially when it comes to advertising.
Facebook users prefer to access the platform through their mobile devices, with the average time spent on the app being 57 minutes per day. This indicates the need to prioritise mobile-friendly content is essential for businesses.
Audience: Primarily Gen Z followed by Millennials
Users: 1 billion monthly active users
Industry Impact: B2C and B2B
Best for Video content (organic)
TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2021 and became extremely popular due to its entertaining characteristics. The average user opens TikTok around 19 times per day, and it’s set to significantly grow in the next couple of years.
Audience: Primarily Millennials followed by Gen Z
Users: 1 billion monthly active users
Industry: B2C
Best for Advertising, photography, and video creative assets
As initially launched, Instagram is no longer a picture-exclusive online platform, with reels, and short-form videos among the most popular types of content on here. Instagram videos now get over 2 times more engagement than photos, indicating how video content in your social media marketing is a critical element for businesses to include in their strategies.
The power of social media marketing is driven by the exceptional capacity of social media platforms in three core marketing areas: connection, interaction, and customer data.
Connection is an integral part of social media as it allows brands to directly connect with their audience through diverse types of content and establish more personal relationships.
The dynamic nature of interactions on social media brings unlimited possibilities for brands to utilise in their social media marketing and leverage the opportunities that the digital word-of-mouth provides. To communicate effectively with your audience, whether you choose direct or passive communication, interactions are a great way to begin building your digital estate and can act as social proof for how you communicate with people off-platform.
Social media marketing tools can allow your business to turn data into actionable market analysis that, later on, can be implemented into your social media marketing plan to target and engage your audience in a more effective and personalised way. Tailoring your social media marketing strategy in this way will communicate your brand more authentically and help it to grow.
Generate leads – Social media is effective in helping you to generate leads and conversions directly from platforms through features such as direct messaging call-to-action buttons on profiles, and Instagram or Facebook shops.
Humanise your brand – Your business profile, posts, and any interactions you can undertake with your audience are a great way to create an approachable image of your brand and pave the way for more personal connections.
Increase brand awareness – The visual nature of social media channels allows you to establish a visual identity of your brand that can greatly improve brand awareness among your target audience. What’s worth noting is better brand recognition and better results with all your further campaigns.
Through a practical lens, our social media team has the expertise to design bespoke strategies and put your organisation in the spotlight, so you can enjoy increased traffic and sales. If you are looking for a trusted media agency to help you reach your goals and fulfil your brand potential, get in touch to book a consultation with our specialists.