A good social media marketing strategy has numerous benefits: increased brand awareness, a big online follower base, more site traffic… It’s no wonder that so many B2C and B2B marketing strategies have some kind of social media marketing plan as a part of its media strategy.
The problem is that social media companies – businesses using social media platforms – don’t always understand how social media marketing works. Or how it can be useful for B2C and B2B marketing. Hence, here are the best social media marketing tactics to use to increase sales.
1. Know Your Audience and Learn from Past Campaigns
First and foremost, you need to know your audience and learn from your previous campaigns. Obviously, you will need to do some research before you can create an effective social media marketing campaign. But even before that you already have some information on who your target audience is. Just look at the data you have from your other digital campaigns (e.g. email marketing, SEO, etc.)
For best results, segment your target audience and then work with the segments separately creating a buyer persona for each one. This will allow you to personalize your social media marketing campaigns and get a higher return on investment (ROI). If you’ve launched social media marketing campaigns before, analyze your mistakes and successes to get a better idea about what works. Or what doesn’t in your particular situation!
2. Create and Launch Paid Ads Campaigns
Contrary to popular belief, social media marketing is not just about having a business account where you make regular posts, interact with comments, and so on. Paid ads campaigns are also a very important part of social media marketing and can be extremely effective when done right. In fact, you can launch paid ads campaigns without even having an account. For example, Instagram ad campaigns are launched with Facebook, so there is no need for an Instagram profile.
As John Mulligan from the writing services reviews site Pick The Writer says, “Social media marketing campaigns that combine regular posting with paid ads can help you succeed faster. You can also get better results with a carefully planned strategy. Paid ads on social media can either be directed to dedicated landing pages or to your social media profiles. This means that you can both increase your sales and grow your social media following base.”
3. Connect with Other Brands Like Yours
Though it may be tempting to stay a lone wolf and do everything by yourself constantly fighting for dominance with your competitors, connecting with other brands like yours can actually be surprisingly beneficial for both parties. Social media platforms are the best place for establishing such relationships. It would be a rather illogical move to ignore the opportunity and potentially let your competitors team up against you.
Partnerships on social media usually lead to giveaways. Two or more brands get exposure to each other’s followers while also giving away their products in a combined kit or as separate prizes for multiple winners. Depending on your niche, you may want to consider holding thematic giveaways or contests. For instance, if you sell art supplies, having an art contest is better than a simple giveaway.
4. Start Using Influencer Marketing
Another subtype of social media marketing is influencer marketing. Like paid ads campaigns, it can boost the effectiveness of your general social media marketing strategy. And like partnerships, it requires you to connect with other social media users. Influencers are the users that have “influence” – large follower bases that are specifically interested in the kind of content the influencer creates. For example, makeup tutorials, lifestyle tips, cooking recipes.
As Margaret McAvoy from the custom writing reviews site Writing Judge says, “Influencer marketing is all about finding the right influencers to promote your brand. If they have an audience that coincides with yours, their promotion of your brand or your products will lead to great results. That’s why it’s so important to find the right influencers. You need to make sure that they create a high-quality post promoting your brand or your products.”
5. Interact with Social Media Users More
As mentioned earlier, social media platforms are a great place for growing your online following base. You can connect with your customers directly and develop lasting relationships with them. However, you can’t do this without proper interaction with these very social media users. The comment section, direct messages, polls, and quizzes – all of these can be used for interacting with your potential and existing customers.
Moreover, you can even provide customer support through social media platforms! Let users tag you in their tweets when they have a problem. This way, your support team can get to them swiftly via Twitter. You can also use Facebook Messenger either as an automated chatbot or as a live chat to provide customer support. If you don’t have a live chat or chatbot on your website, Facebook Messenger can also be a great alternative.
6. Create Dedicated Landing Pages for Your Campaigns
Last but not least, you need to create the aforementioned dedicated landing pages for your campaigns. It doesn’t matter whether you use paid ads because landing pages can still be used in a social media campaign. For example, by encouraging your followers to “check out the link in bio” that will direct them to a landing page with the product you are selling.
Links to landing pages can be placed in multiple spots. Firstly, there are paid ads. Secondly, there’s the “link in bio” method. It can also be used to direct your customers to a page listing multiple links including several links to multiple landing pages. It is the most common on Instagram. Thirdly, you can use links to landing pages in your tweets (Twitter), articles and posts (Facebook), and pins (Pinterest). If you decide to use landing page tools, Content Mavericks has a good resource to help you choose the best one.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, social media marketing may be confusing at times. But once you get the hang of it and start using the best tactics for it, you will be able to launch successful and extremely effective social media campaigns.
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