These days, most businesses are on social media. That’s because their audience is on social media – and whether you’ve got an active business account or not, your current and prospective customers are talking about you, searching for your product, and reading reviews about your business.
Social media marketing is effective for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest perks of this advertising method is the cost-effectiveness. When you market your business (correctly) on social media, you will see an ROI that outperforms just about every other type of advertising – but in order to truly be successful, you need to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Let’s talk about what makes a great social media strategy for your business.
Building Block #1: Social Engagement
It’s a pretty obvious thing to say, but I’ll say it anyway: if you’re a business on social media, you want people to engage with your brand. Having said that, just because people are engaging with your content doesn’t mean they’re going to turn into customers. For example, if you make a funny video that has very little to do with your service or product, people may share it a gazillion times but never show any interest in buying from you.
So how do you engage effectively? First of all, try targeted boosting on Facebook. It puts your content in front of the right people so that you’re not relying on Facebook’s extremely unreliable algorithm to do that for you. Secondly, create content that is entertaining and informs people about your product or service, and make sure that content is targeted properly. A good balance of entertainment and education with a targeting kicker is the formula for success!
Building Block #2: Audience Growth
While your number of followers certainly isn’t everything, it’s good to see steady, organic growth on your social platforms. Start with a small but devoted following, provide the kind of content mentioned above, and watch as the followers come in.
No, you probably won’t get 500 new followers every day (unless you’re buying followers, which does nobody any good, so don’t even think about it). But if you’re doing it right, you should see a steady increase in the number of people who are willingly engaging with your brand.
Building Block #3: Clicks
At the end of the day, the whole point of engaging and growing your social media audience is to drive traffic to your website. That means creating a strategy that persuades your potential customers to get off of social media and onto your site.
So how do you do that?
I mentioned Facebook targeting before, but just about every social media platform offers a way to put your content in front of people who are actually interested in it. Also, here’s a quick #ProTip: If you have a business Instagram page, anytime you boost something on Facebook, it will automatically boost it on Instagram, too – so it’s like a two-for-one deal. Twitter’s promoted tweets work pretty well, too, and may be helpful in spending your ad dollars wisely.
Building Block #4: Retargeting
Let’s face it: none of us have very robust attention spans. We see something interesting on Facebook, we click it, we poke around a website for a bit, and then we go back to Facebook, where our friend’s cat meme makes us instantly forget everything we just saw.
Enter retargeting.
Retargeting is a way to put your content in front of someone who has shown meaningful interest in what you do or what you’re selling – but they haven’t followed through with a purchase. So, that pair of shoes they were just looking at on your website, but didn’t buy? They’ll start seeing those shoes all over the Internet now, and it’ll be much harder to forget about how cute they are.
Your chances of a conversion are much higher when you add retargeting into the mix, and because it’s so cost-effective, it’s a great add-on to your social media strategy.
Questions About Social Media? Contact Uptick!
Here at Uptick Marketing, digital is our passion. We understand the world of social media, and we can help you optimize your strategy for the best possible ROI. Contact us today for more information!
