7-Step Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy

It’s high time for advertisers to incorporate a social media marketing strategy in 2023. Since social media users are growing daily, marketers need to leverage this expansion through clever ads and compelling posts. The average user visits more or less seven social media platforms every month. So if you’re an advertiser looking to get traction on socials, now is the time to craft effective social media marketing campaigns. Following these seven steps will ensure your social media advertising effort pays off. 

1. Identify your goals 

Let’s start with the basics. Any marketing strategy doesn’t work without identifying what your goals are. And since no social media platform is created equal, it’s vital to jot down your goals before publishing content. 

Here are some top social media marketing goals and possible metrics you need to look at:

Instill brand awareness

Are you posting on social media for brand awareness? If you’re a new contender in your industry, brand awareness is one of the first steps to get people talking about your brand. You might have to look at the number of followers, mentions, shares, and reach. 

Increase traffic

Social media advertising is another efficient way to increase traffic to your website and other sales channels. Some metrics are clicks on social media posts and bounce rates.

Increase sales

Social media is an excellent platform to grow your revenue, provided that you create captivating ads. Some metrics to consider are signups and conversions from social media ads. 

Generate new leads

If your goal is to find new leads for potential conversion, social media platforms are the perfect channels. This could be measured by the number of new signups, content downloads, or email addresses. 

Boost PR 

Boosting your PR mentions is a way to let people know your brand exists–fast! Measure this goal through your posts’ potential PR reach, mentions in the press, and influencers talking about your brand. 

2. Identify your target audience

The next step in a robust social media marketing strategy is knowing who you’re marketing to. Without a clear definition and segmentation of your audience, you won’t be able to modify advertising campaigns for maximum reach and conversions. Target audience segmentation is dividing your market into smaller and more specific groups. This way, you create more relevant social media posts and messaging.

Research your target audience by classifying them according to demographics and psychographics. A crucial step in identifying your target audience is creating buyer personas to know which people are likely to convert. 

These are some of the data you need to gather:

• Age
• Location
• Pain points
• Gender 
• Interests
• Spending capacity
• Spending behaviors
• Language, etc.

3. Create relevant content

Advertising on social media isn’t about post frequency. Instead, it’s all about creating relevant content to get more engagement and, hopefully, garner conversions. No matter how good your social media ads or posts are, they’re futile if people don’t get value from them. 

Here are some social media content post types:

• Blog posts, articles, guides, reviews, etc. 
• Videos
• Video stories
• Testimonials and reviews
• Contests
• Ebooks
• Reshared content
• Live videos
• Announcements
• Holiday-themed content

4. Choose the proper channels

Advertisers sometimes bombard posts in all channels, hoping to get maximum leads and conversions. However, each social media platform isn’t the same. You might have more target audiences hanging out on Facebook than on Instagram, and vice versa. 

It’s essential to leverage every social channel’s strengths and advantages and see where you can get optimum reach. 

For instance, live videos are better for Facebook marketing as it’s more effective for users on the channel. On the other hand, Instagram is a visual channel, making images and short clips more appropriate. Twitter relies on brief captions and news-worthy posts, which might be suitable for announcements and catchy copywriting. Moreover, advertising on YouTube fits target audiences who prefer to digest videos instead of long-form content. 

Choosing the right channel means you’re getting the most out of your advertising efforts. 

5. Schedule your posts

Many advertisers have been looking for answers to the question: How often should you post on social media? 

To tell you the truth, there is no definite answer to this. The most effective method is testing and trial-and-error to know when your target audience engages most with your posts. Other factors might affect social media post schedules, such as holidays and seasons, making a definite answer inaccurate.

That said, do some trial runs and analyze when people check their feeds in the morning, at lunchtime, and at nighttime. 

You can start with one to two posts every week and gradually increase once you know which best times to post on each social network. 

The most important thing to remember when scheduling posts is not to spam your audience’s feeds. Quality posts and perfect timing allow you to get the most engagement from people. 

Automate this task so you can post in batches and during regular hours. You can use tools like Buffer for schedule automation, Hootsuite to figure out social listening, HubSpot to monitor content, and Sprout Social for content reports. 

6. Perform social media competitive analysis

Performing social media competitive analysis lets you figure out which areas competitors are excelling in and which are not. 

Ask yourself these questions when stalking your competition:

• What social media channels are your competitors using?
• What kinds of posts are they creating?
• How often do your competitors posts on every social media channel?
• What positive and negative feedback are they getting from followers?
• How are your competitors communicating and engaging with their audience? 
• What content are they sourcing from other brands/social media users?

Doing competitor research and analysis is imperative to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Pro Tip: People are bombarded with content daily. It’s best to create unique, entertaining, and valuable content that can go viral.

7. Monitor social media marketing campaigns

One must-have tool when doing social media advertising is analytics. Analytics tools such as Zoho Social, Buffer, CoSchedule, or Brandwatch allow you to monitor and understand social media marketing campaigns. This way, you can tailor-fit future social media advertising methods for excellent results. 

Ensure you’re not focusing on vanity metrics and analyzing metrics that matter, such as:

• Engagement – Clicks, likes, comments, saved posts, etc.
• Impressions – Posts that people see
• Reach – The number of people who have seen content associated with your profile
• Profile visits – People who landed on your social media page
• Mentions – The number of people who mentioned your brand or posts
• Shares – Posts that your followers and non-followers have shared
• Tags – People that tagged your social media page in other posts
• Video views – How many people have viewed your videos
• Conversion rates – How many people bought from your social channels
• Click-through rates – People who click on your ads or posts

Conclusion

Getting the most out of your social media marketing strategy ensures you’re not wasting time, effort, and marketing budget. Do these seven simple steps to navigate social media and connect with potential leads. Finally, invest in essential tools to help with automation, data aggregation, and analysis.