84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form and, according to State of Inbound Marketing, social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.
If you have big plans to win the internet this year and wants to double your sales online with an effective social media marketing strategy, keep reading.
Table of Contents
What Is A Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Simply put, a social media marketing strategy is a marketing plan that you put together to promote your products on social networks to generate leads and connect with your customers.
According to Social Media Examiner, a solid social media marketing strategy consists of 8 elements:
- Identify Business Goals
- Set Marketing Objectives
- Identify Ideal Customers
- Research Competition
- Choose Channels and Tactics
- Create a Content Strategy
- Allocate Budget and Resources
- Assign Roles
Clearly, you must have already established your business on popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, so here are a few new strategies to try in 2016.
Join SnapChat
Over the last couple of years, SnapChat grew rapidly from being a simple photo sharing app to a lead generating machine for brands.
Today, almost every business use this app to promote services and connect with people through instant and disappearing photos, especially for targeting young audiences.
“Snapchat is more popular among American teens than Facebook, with 19 percent of them saying the mobile app is the most important social network,” according to AdWeek.
So, if your business still haven’t got a profile on SnapChat, it’s time to hop on the bandwagon.
Create Viral Content
It’s the quickest way to generate a massive amount of leads and sales overnight.
Going viral on a social network takes a lot of careful planning and strategy. This means, understanding your audience, studying analytics, and crafting unique content specifically for your social media channels.
It will cost more than sharing random memes and quotes, but the ROI (Return On Investment ) will be worth it.
Sharing funny comics, useful infographics, original videos are some of the popular methods for increasing your reach. Although, the content type will depend on which social network you use and what type of an audience you’re targeting.
Provide Awesome Customer Service
Customers don’t look for a phone numbers or email addresses to contact a brand. Today, they find it easier to do a simple search on Facebook or Twitter to find a brand and ask questions to get personal support.
It’s crucial that you have someone stand by to answer these questions you get through popular social networks, respond to their opinions, and solve their problems with your products.
Check out how AirAsia take care of customer problems through Twitter.
Boldly Go Where No Brand Has Gone Before
We’re not talking about traveling to another galaxy. But it’s important that you explore new and less popular social networks to promote your brand.
Specifically, Google+. Many brands have abandoned Google+ claiming it’s a “ghost town”. The truth is, this social network still receives millions of active users every day.
Google+ receives over 300 million monthly active users, as of August 2015.
Stop listening to rumors and hypes and take advantage of this massive social network by staying active on Google+ and other less popular social networks.
Team Up With Influencers
Influencer marketing is the process where you hire social media influencers, in other words someone with a lot of followers, to promote your content to their followers.
It actually works better than publishing an ad. Studies show that “92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from other people—even if they don’t know them personally—over promotional content that comes directly from brands”
Find influencers in your target audience and experiment with promoting your products through them. It’s not only a great way to increase awareness for your products, but also an easy way to get user feedback.
Build Authority
People tend to trust brands and businesses with more followers on Twitter and Facebook, than those with few. Many marketers claim that the numbers don’t matter as long as you generate leads, but it does have strong effect on building trust.
Develop a plan to get more Likes on Facebook and more Followers on Twitter to beat your competitors and show off your authority.
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