210-582-5842SMBs are now spending more money on social media marketing than any other category, according to a report published by BIA/Kelsey. In their survey of 500+ small to midsized businesses, they found that last year they spent approximately 21% of their ad budgets on social media.
Also, a report issued by MarketingTechBlog found that 8 out of 10 SMBs are using social media to drive growth.
Spending and getting ROI are 2 different things.Here are some tips to get your SMB to the next level in Social Media Marketing.
Know Yourself
WHERE DO I BEGIN? Far too often, SMBs are all over the map, or they allow decision paralysis to interfere with developing a social media marketing campaign.
The first step should be to define: WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS? AND WHY SHOULD YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE CARE?
Answering these questions should provide you with a clear vision of how you wish to portray your business to the world including social media.
Know Your Customer
Along with knowing who you are, you also need to know who your customers are. Who is going to be attracted to your products? Why do they want to buy them? What benefits do your products provide to consumers?
Finding Your Social Media Voice
Social media marketing offers tremendous advantages because there are so many platforms for providing brand exposure. The flip side of this is it can be difficult to identify exactly which platform is best for promoting your brand. Each social media channel has a distinct personality, and tends to attract certain target demographics. The more you can learn about the intricacies of each social media channel, the better prepared you will be to choose the platform best suited for disseminating your brand’s voice.
70 percent of B2C marketers have found consumers through Facebook, the 800 pound gorilla in social media, but it only helps you if you know that the most common demographic on Facebook is between 25 and 34 years old. However, don’t forget that Facebook can also be a channel when targeting older consumers. Some interesting stats about Facebook:
- 864 million daily active users on average for September 2014
- 703 million mobile daily active users on average for September 2014
- 1.35 billion monthly active users as of September 30, 2014
- 1.12 billion mobile monthly active users as of September 30, 2014
67 percent of users on Twitter are more likely to make purchases from brands that they follow. In planning your campaign on Twitter, be aware that 90 percent of people state that they follow businesses on Twitter in order to receive promos or discounts. So, definitely have a special discount strategy ready for Twitter action.
Pinterest is dabbling with Sponsored Pins for revenue generation and it has expanded at a near exponential rate. The fact that more than 90 percent of the pins created on Pinterest are made by women is a factor you may want to consider in your social marketing campaign.
If you market to teens, or if your target market involves anything related to travel, this is the place to be.
Once you have identified which social media platform is the best choice for your marketing strategy, the next step is to determine the best type of content to post on your social networking site.
For instance on Facebook, 75% of the content posted by brands consists of photos.
Make sure you also post content that will be of interest to your target market. In this regard, you have flexibility because you can opt to write your own content, or locate interesting content to share with your audience.
Measure and Learn
Post regularly, and interact with your audience frequently, they will go elsewhere.
Look at Metrics and see what is getting most engagement, best time to post, look for influencers and follow them, use Social Advertising and measure the clicks and conversions, integrate Social Media with Google Analytics and use Facebook Conversion Pixels to track your success. For clicks, use http://bitly.com as URL shortener. Use www.sumall.com for overall social media dashboard.
If can’t measure it, you can’t control it!!
Share your ideas on what has worked best for you….nothing is set in stone and we are all learning continuously.
