There’s more to conducting a successful social media marketing campaign than just garnering a bunch of thumbs up and comments on the posts you make. Even more important than the tweets, shares, likes, and comments, are the sales leads that you make.
Getting your posts likes is a good start. But you need to figure out how to convert those likes and comments into qualified leads. Part of this social media marketing journey demands that you identify where your customer base is and tap right into it.
It’s a long journey – one that starts with you identifying the right social media platform and working it out like a real pro. At the top of it all, you need a tested strategy backed up with social media marketing tactics that you’ll be using to execute the strategy.
To begin with: how do you make of a situation where you have the perfect products or services in your pipeline, and yet you’re not making a killing with them on social media. Your content is up to snuff as well, but for some reason, there’s nothing impressive about the success that you’re getting. How do you explain that?
Simple logic will demand that you go back to the drawing board and work things out afresh. Your whole social media marketing strategy and tactical approach need a complete overhaul. You need to reshuffle things around and make some minor alterations to your approach.
And most importantly realise that your content is perhaps not reaching its proper audience – no matter how convincing and engaging it is.
It’s a common mistake among marketers. Too often, they create a marketing campaign first and then try to identify which part of the market is more likely to be receptive to it. This is not how things should work. You first have to identify your target audience and figure out how to best market to them second.
Identify Your Audience
It’s common sense; before you make any effort to reach your target audience, you must first identify them.
- Find out about their age group.
- Find out more about their average income.
- Find out about the value they share.
In other words, you’re trying to picture them by looking at them from all the possible angles. You’re trying to attach a face to them and find out more about their behaviour, style, and way of living.
You need this information to build the type of content that your target customers might be interested in. You’re not just creating content or putting together some pieces of advises. You want to grab the attention of your audience and get them interested in your content. So it makes sense for you to identify them and take your valuable time to both study and understand them.
As a marketer, it’s your job to help businesses that hire you to figure out their customer base or target audience. You can do this by creating a questionnaire that your clients have to fill up.
The next thing you want to do is review different platforms and choose one that’s perfect for your business. Make sure you’re investing in the right channel, and that it’s the channel that the bulk of your target audience uses the most.
The content you create must also be adjusted to fit this channel. Also, be prepared to do some little digging and research. Remember to check the content that your competitors post, and find out which ones among them enjoy better traction and engagement. That’s the direction you want to take while crafting your content.
Different Platforms
Not all social media channels are the same. You have to understand every single one of these platforms to figure out how to best target your audience on the specific channels.
Facebook Audience
Facebook is the most popular social media platform out there – with more than 2.23 billion people logging in to check it out every month.
Worth noting is that 30% of all Facebook users are aged between 25 and 34. Not to mention, about 79% of Singapore’s population is signed up with this social media channel.
Taking all this information into consideration, it’s a safe bet that your target audience can be found on this social media channel. You just have to know where to find them and how to target them best.
Instagram is another popular social media channel, with more than 1 billion active users per month. According to Omnicore, the platform is more popular with women than men. To be more precise, women account for 39% of its user base, while men only accounting for 30%.
The platform is also noted for hosting lots of millennials. That makes it the ideal platform to market on if your target audience is below the age of 35.
Not quite popular as Facebook and Instagram, but it does command a huge following. According to the latest report released by Cision, there are about 326 million active users on Twitter.
The report also goes on to show that about 37% of the users are between the age of 18 and 25, while 25% are between the age of 25 and 49.
So compared to Facebook, Twitter is more suited for targeting a younger audience. That means, whenever you’re planning your twitter marketing calendar, your focus should be on crafting interesting tweets that appeal the most to this audience.
Survey your customers
Stats paint a blurry picture of your target audience. But surveys bring in more details. They allow you to draw the portrait of your buyer personas.
Remember, you also need a strategy to find your target audience on Facebook. Part of this strategy is asking the right questions. This makes surveys a huge component of your content marketing best practises.
Another approach is to try surveying the customers you already have. Find out which social media network do they prefer.
Here are more questions you can include in your survey:
- Do you read blogs regularly? If so, what blogs do you read?
- Which social media network do you prefer?
- What kind of people do you follow on social media?
You can use Google Forms or Typeform to collect the answers to these questions and use them to paint a clear picture of your target audience.
Determine Your Audience Size
Social media channels aren’t just meant for promotions. They can be a great source of clear data about your customer base and its size as well, provided you know how to use them well. This statement applies chiefly to Facebook.
If you’re a marketer, for instance, you may use the platform to find out how many people are actually interested in online marketing in Singapore. This number may turn out to be too large, so you want to narrow down your audience by specifying the niche.
You can specify your niche or field of interest to something like ‘Search Engine Marketing,’ content curation, facebook marketing, and so forth.
The more you’re able to narrow down your audience to specifics, the more you’ll be increasing your ROI. It’s that simple.
Narrowing your audience will also reduce your ad spend.
Another simple trick is to narrow down your audience by pointing out to a similar competitor. For instance, McDonald’s can specify their audience by pointing their interest to Burger King or KFC. That way, anyone who doesn’t enjoy the option of ordering their food from these two fast-food chains has McDonald’s to consider.
Locating Your Customer Base and how to connect with them
Did you know that almost any social media channel out there allows you to upload your email database?
With Facebook’s ad manager, it’s even possible to create a custom audience on the platform. You can even combine your CRM and social media and start targeting your email list on social media almost instantaneously.
After creating the custom audience, the next thing you want to do is use the data you have to create a lookalike audience. What this means is that you’ll be simply using your current list of customers to find an audience that’s very similar to your current audience.
It’s a simple Facebook feature that allows you to extend your reach by finding you another audience that’s very similar to your current customer base based on several key parameters.
Finding Your Target Audience in Groups
If you’re running a personal Facebook account, and you’re looking to connect to like-minded individuals online, then consider searching for groups with similar interests and join them. Chances are also good that members of those groups have similar interests as your ideal customers.
Where you’re providing social media marketing services to multiple clients, you can start by figuring out how to segment the audience to avoid creating unnecessary confusion.
Tailor Your Content to Match Your Target Audience
At this point, you’re done with the basic preparation. You can now go ahead and tailor the best content possible for the audience that you’ve identified and located.
Several rules apply here, and which you have to place at the top of your mind whenever you’re working on your social media content.
- For curated posts, you’re restricted to only one post per week.
- Don’t make more than two promotional posts per week.
- Make sure you have at least one engaging post a day.
Everything you do revolves around making your page engage with your social media followers. Keep in mind that your followers aren’t following you on these platforms to be marketed to. So instead of bombarding them with salesy and pitchy posts, focus on educating and inspiring them.
Let your audience see the value of following you. It could be that they get to learn something new through or that you constantly update them on what’s latest in the industry.
What you need is a content creation template that you use to determine which posts are right for your audience.
Find out what the audience prefers and create a content plan around it. Find out if they prefer funny clips, polls, motivational quotes, infographics, or educational blog posts.
Use the information you get to create a content template or come up with a content plan that you think your audience will appreciate more.
Of course, you want to generate leads, traffic, and sales from social media. However, while at it, never forget that there’s one crucial goal that you can never afford to compromise – the relationship you establish with your audience.
Good content can help, but it’s not enough. What you need is a content plan. You can schedule posts and all that, but your audience expects you to be there. They want to feel your presence and feel like they’re interacting with someone they can relate to and share some their sentiments on a more personal level.
Creating a Well-balanced Content Plan
A content plan will ensure that you’re able to target every single person in your audience. It will also ensure that you’re able to respond to the different concerns your audience have.
Engaging Posts
You’re not limited as to what you can write about or how high you can let your creativity fly. There’s a lot you can think about and weave into the content that you create. Remember that you’re not just creating content for one channel, but for every other channel that you’re using.
Here’re some ideas to consider:
Ask them Questions
Once in a while, ask your audience questions that they can respond to by airing their own views and sentiments. Where your customers are not engaging your posts that could be interpreted to mean you’re not giving them enough hook points to chime in with their contributions.
By asking a question, you’re making your intentions and expectations clear. That way, you’ll also be helping them know what it is that you want them to do instead of letting them figure some things out on their own.
Question and Answer posts are good for communication and polls. You can use them to find out how your fans feel about your products and services or if there’s any room for improvement.
Motivate with Visual Quotes
You can send these quotes as plain text, but for some reason, your audience prefers reading it as visuals. This also increases its chances of getting noticed.
Online users are also more likely to read a post that’s accompanied by a picture as opposed to one that’s purely plain text. Take advantage of this piece of information by adorning your motivation quotes in nice visuals.
People have inner questions that they’re always grappling with. Quotes and sayings speak directly to them about some of these situations, pushing them to instinctively tap on the like button for more information.
Promotional Posts
Promotional posts are an even bigger challenge to create. It’s an art that has to be approached with great caution, taking a few things into consideration:
Don’t be Salesy Promotional posts aren’t all about asking your audience to purchase your products or services. They’re not about offering discounts and coupon codes to your audience.
Instead, any post that represents your brand in any way qualifies as a promotional post.
You’re simply working on your brand presence. And from what we know, you don’t have to be so obvious that you’re trying to promote your brand with the posts that you make. Instead, try taking a more subtle approach.
The promotional posts you come up with can also take the form of news, webinars, or any other piece of content that touches on your brand without necessarily promoting anything.
Get Personal: You can get personal with your post by telling its story. Once in a while, take a break from your usual content, and make a more personal post. You can talk about your office or the motivation behind your brand.
Another option is to talk about your intentions and plans. What is it that you’ve always wanted to achieve?
Is there any member of your team that’s worth highlighting, a cog in the wheel that no one knows about?
Another approach is to line up your entire staff and let your audience know them. Ask them to follow them as well, and let them know that they’re dealing with real people with feelings.
In other words, you’re making yourself available for friendship just in case any of them wants to reach out and talk to you on a personal level.
Educational Posts: Informative visuals, blog posts, and infographics make great educational posts. All you have to do is come up with topics that you suspect your audience might be interested in.
You can even ask them through a Q&A post. Once you get an idea of what to write about, get an experienced graphic designer to help you create nice visual and infographics for the content. If you have the time to create them yourself, then consider signing up with snappa or canvas where you can create these visuals for absolutely free.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this post has served you all the inspiration you need to reach your social media marketing goals this year.
We also invite our readers to talk to our social media marketing consultants at MediaOne, and let them help you put your social media marketing ideas into action.
