Your Essential Social Media Marketing Guide

What is social media marketing?

Gaining website traffic or brand attention through social media.

Today’s consumers expect to interact with a company as if it was a living breathing human. Even big name brands are finding inexpensive interaction across social media.

A classic success story is JCPenney, who didn’t have the budget for a seven million dollar Super Bowl ad, so they took to Twitter for marketing. They had immediate success with consumer and brand engagement from just two tweets.

“We didn’t spend a dime,” said Sean Ryan, J.C. Penney’s director of social and mobile “and hopefully gave America a little something to laugh about on their second screen during the game,” Their two tweets earned more than 150,000 brand mentions, millions of impressions and 10,000 new followers on Twitter. Most importantly, the product they were promoting nearly doubled in sales the week following the Super Bowl.

What is the benefit of social media marketing?

Reach new potential customers and re-engage past customers.

When social media is done right, it will lead to relationship building and brand loyalty.

The key is consistency. Don’t assume you need to post every day to engage your audience. According to a study from Hubspot.com, pages with less than 10k followers changed from posting every day to 1-5 times a month and saw their clicks-per-post almost double.

Though you won’t typically see a lot of leads generated from social media of advertising, it’s excellent for brand recognition and it’s an inexpensive method for drilling into local markets.

The Value of Facebook

Facebook is the largest social network in the world. There are over 1.94 billion monthly active Facebook users. – (Source: Facebook 5/3/17)

Facebook Ads let you target users by things like location, education level, gender, age, industry, purchase history, and the Facebook pages they’ve liked. So you can create extremely focused ads for your users.

The Value of Twitter and Instagram

24 percent of online adults in the United States are Twitter users. Additionally, 42 percent of U.S. Twitter users accessed the microblogging platform on a daily basis. – (Statista 2017)

Part of what makes things like Twitter and Instagram so powerful is the direct interaction you get with your customer base. You can read their tweets and status updates to get insights into their daily lives.

Tip: Instagram is not a platform where you can add product links, so it’s best suited for brand exposure.

How do I start social media marketing?

You can hire a marketer for $300 – $3,000 a month or you can create your own strategy.

There are solutions for every budget. Think of marketing as fertilizer that helps your crop grow, it doesn’t result in immediate rewards, but with time you will see sales and leads increase. The larger your marketing budget is the larger returns you can expect because you can try more channels and strategies. Social media marketing has one of the highest Return On Investment rates. Whether you manage your own or hire a marketer, keep track of your marketing spend and the leads it generates.

(Profit from Marketing/Cost of Marketing)/Cost of Marketing = Return On Investment

How to Create Your Own Social Media Marketing Strategy

1. Bring a Positive Attitude
   Keep your best foot forward, there are so many times when a tweet has gotten a brand in trouble with its fans.
2. Follow the Crowd
   Stick to the social media that your target market is on. There’s no reason to sign up for something like Pinterest if it won’t get you to the right market. Carefully choose 2-3 social media channels and consistently engage with them. Check against this chart if you don’t know where to start.
3. Provide Value
   Your followers will ignore you if they hear too many promotional messages. Adopt an 80-20 rule and keep your content mostly educational and valuable.
4. Stand Out
   Great posts include pictures of upcoming or completed projects. Also, posts that let your community know you can answer any questions they have about your services.
5. Unify Your Efforts
   Social Media Marketing is most effective when you can unify your marketing message across landing pages, add remarketing tags, and track conversion with the correct codes.
6. Use Visuals
   Posts with custom photos and logos or digital media, like eBooks, are a better way to attract attention than just text. According to Kissmetrics, photos get 53 percent more likes, 104 percent more comments, and 84 percent more click-throughs than text-based posts

The best thing about social media marketing is being able to attribute conversions to specific sources. With our help, you draw from our knowledge of the technology needed for running ads and tracking conversions. We can manage your marketing for you or call us for a consult. We can point you down the right path toward a smarter social media marketing strategy. We offer a wide range of services to help you build your social media presence and drive traffic to your site. We can also manage your paid advertising. Give us a call for more details.