Has Online Marketing Urged Brands To Create Presence “EVERYWHERE”?

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It is true, you need a strong online presence to stand out among your niche and a greater outlook on your brand will, in turn, help you convert more leads into sales. But the question remains unanswered, do I really need to be on all the social networking channels?

Well not really, what might work for one industry might not be the deal closure for another. It is important to assess the overall aim of a business to consider which social platform is ideal to have a presence on and what factors can actually lead to the sale!

Below are 7 major factors you need to assess for a successful social media approach.

1. Choose Your Social Media Channels

• Where is your audience the most active: you’ll have to analyze if your customers are active on one or more social channels and build a strong presence on those channels for maximum reach.
• Determine Your Audience: Understand who your audience is to create what they like.  It is by this means that your audience is going to be truly devoted to you(brand).

2. Setting Goals for Social Media and Your Business

• Identify business objectives and lay down the social media goals that you’d want to achieve. Ex. I want my sales to increase 3X times and I would do so by implementing Facebook ad reach campaign. Here you are not only objectifying your business goal but also taking into account the importance of Facebook and how you’d use this channel to increase your overall sales.

3. Complete a Competitive Analysis

• Determine who your competitors are and what strategy they have implemented to gain customers. This will not only help you understand their strategy but also help you analyze where you as a brand is lagging behind.

4. Creating a Strong Social Media Content Strategy

• Create content that is of interest to your audience and A/B test the variants that perform better. Customers are on a lookout for an ideal solution for their problem and if you are customer-centric enough and have the right solution to offer, I bet you’d be the next big thing.

5. Setting a Social Media Marketing Budget

• Allocate budget to your monthly/quarterly social media promotions basis the ad spend and use of social media paid tools. Social media can be a boon for many in need, you just have to use it rightly to see the conversion. If one of the channels isn’t really working out for you, it’s a sign you have been doing it wrong! Re-do the work if necessary, remember consistency is the key.

6. Choose Your Social Media Tools

• Use your go-to social media tools as your strongest assets to plan, execute and report your social media efforts. Source tools that are a fit to your business and marketing needs, this will save you time and extra effort that can be used wisely to plan out the calendar events.

7. Social Media Reporting and Analytics

• Justify your social media efforts by creating monthly/quarterly reports. You could do so with the help of free tools like Google Analytics, In-app Analytics( Facebook insights, Instagram insights, Youtube insights, etc) or use paid analytics tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush. It is critical to evaluate your efforts in a timely manner this will help you understand what’s working well for you and you can always go about adding or altering efforts for future promotions.

To conclude the learning, let us look into an example.

Let us assume that a brand that caters to the needs of Home & lifestyle onlookers needs branding. The major focus of the brand is to simplify buying process of home décor and furniture. It currently offers a wide range of furniture option from the living room to the bedroom and office setup. At present they only focus on Bangalore region and scope of expansion to neighboring cities is in progress.

Let us begin with analyzing our target audience for the brand and create buyer personas.

Demographics

Age Group: 20-55

Occupation: Housewives, Interior designers

Geographic location: Bangalore

Buying pattern of the TG: Upgrade to new and trendy interiors, online shoppers

Why would they buy from this brand?: Stylish and innovative designs, Imported materials and  Competitive price.

The brand targets Facebook and Instagram with paid promotions to increase brand awareness and has a good online presence and conversion rate. They visualize their brand with imagery and videos of beautiful homes, creating an eye-candy of what their audience would love to see.

The Business goal of the brand is to increase brand awareness and overall conversion rate by 5X in next 3 months, they will be carrying this plan out on Facebook and Instagram with paid ads with a set budget of 50,000/- a month.

Their major competitors are Urban ladder and Furniturewala. With the help of competitor research, the brand has found what its competitors are doing to gain customers, hence creating a social plan for its own brand became easier with the major focus being on the regional selling.

This brand uses Google Analytics and Facebook insights to track their progress and alter their efforts based on the output of their campaigns.  They review their campaigns fortnightly to see which day and time of the week performed better than that of the other days of the calendar week. Making it crucial to schedule posts at the time their audience is most active. This helped them grow 2X times in just 4 weeks and gain quality leads.

Conclusion

Social media marketing is often described as the complex stream to market/brand a product, with little to no knowledge you are battling a war with no weapon. It is crucial to study your business before you pick up social channels for promotion.  Look at the broader picture of how you’d go about creating a plan for your social presence and executing the same. All you need to do is — Gather your business info -> Align them with your business goals -> Take a lead with social -> Measure your analytics.

Now that you have a simpler outlook on social media marketing, what’s that you would like to begin with?