Are you tired of blindly throwing money into marketing campaigns and not seeing the results you want? Look no further, the answer lies in social media marketing. As we spend more and more time online, social media platforms have become essential for reaching and understanding your target audience. But the secret lies in understanding the unique abilities and utilising the tools social media provide.
According to a recent study, the global average time spent on social media in 2022 is 147 minutes a day. When adding up this number over the timespan of a year it equals to a whopping 37 days (53,655 minutes) marketers have to persuade their audience. And with the unique set of tools social media provides, you can tailor your online presence to the specific needs and characteristics of your audience.
Not only are social media feeds one of the places where audiences spend a lot of their time – therefore increasing your chances of being seen – but it’s also all about getting to know your audience. If you don’t know your audience, you won’t be able to cater to their needs. Social media provides a wealth of data on the demographics, interests, and behaviour of your target audience. Marketers use this information to create more effective campaigns and make a more meaningful connection with their customers.
In short, social media marketing is a must-have in any successful marketing strategy. With the average time spent on social media increasing every year, it’s the perfect platform to reach and understand your audience.
Knowing Your Audience's Needs
Thanks to the internet, gathering data on your target audience’s demographics, interests, and behaviour has never been easier. Social media platforms and search engines provide a wealth of information, and tools like web analytics and tracking cookies give even more insight into website visitors.
By tailoring your messaging and marketing efforts to better resonate with your audience, you’ll see increased conversion rates, customer retention, and ultimately, an improved ROI (return on investment). Understanding your audience can also lead to identifying untapped market segments and opportunities.
Personalization is key in today’s market, and understanding your audience allows you to create a more meaningful connection with them. By understanding their pain points, needs, and preferences, you can create content and offer products that they will find valuable. Plus, you’ll be able to reach them on their preferred channels of communication, therefore, reaching them in a way that they are most comfortable with.
Staying ahead of the game is crucial in any industry and understanding your audience allows you to anticipate their future needs and preferences. This will help you make informed decisions about product development, pricing, and distribution as well. It also enables you to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns in real-time and to make adjustments accordingly.
You won’t often come across marketing agencies who don’t use social media as part of their marketing campaigns. According to Sprout Social, in 2022, A staggering 94% of marketers utilise Facebook and 78% of marketers use Instagram. But in a fast-paced and ever-changing industry, it’s worth keeping an eye on the rising star, TikTok, as it saw the largest increase (83%) in platform investment for brands in 2022.
Important Social Media Marketing tools
Social media analytics – Social media platforms provide analytic tools that allow you to track engagement, reach, and conversions on your social media posts as well as the demographic data of your audience. These types of data can be retrieved from your social media page’s Meta Bussiness Suite and Google Analytics. This can be used to Identify which types of content are resonating with your audience and which aren’t. You can also create surveys and polls to gather feedback from your audience and gain insights into what they want and need.
For even more advanced analytics and tracking capabilities, there are many third-party tools available such as Hootsuite Insights, Sprout Social, and Brand24. Third-party tools provide a type of “toolbox” in which you can track everything from engagement to audience growth as well as schedule and create content, all from one place. Some other useful capabilities third-party tools provide are:
Social listening – Social listening tools allow marketers to monitor mentions of their brand and specific keywords on social media, forums, and blogs. This can help them understand how their audience is talking about their brand and products. As well as assist in identifying influencers who might be a good fit for their campaigns.
Tag Manager – The data provided by these tools can be easily correlated with data from social media platforms, giving you a holistic view of your online presence. Tag manager allows you to install various types of code (tags) to your website which enables you to track activity across your sites and apps. This includes Google Analytics tracking codes, Google Analytics event codes, Google Ads conversion scripts, and remarketing tags.
These are just a few examples of the tools that social media marketers use to better understand their audience. Keep in mind that different tools will be more appropriate for different industries and marketing goals, so it’s important to evaluate different options and choose the ones that are most relevant to your business.
Social Media Revolutionised The marketing world
Social media has revolutionized the way we market our products and services. As mentioned previously, through access to valuable audience data, personalization and targeting capabilities, and real-time analytics, social media has changed the game for marketers everywhere. But what does this mean to your brand?
Brand Identity – Establishing your brand identity goes hand and hand with creating your buyer persona: When you know who your most likely customer is, you will be better equipped in constructing your brand identity according to your customer’s point of view. This will enable you to find the right tone of voice and provide relevant content. According to Lucidpress, establishing a brand identity can increase your business revenue by approximately 33%. Furthermore, according to an article published in My-take, 82% of companies using buyer personas reported that they improved upon their value proposition.
Brand awareness and loyalty – Social media is proven to be one of the most effective methods of creating brand awareness. Providing relevant posts and continuously emerging on social media feeds enables you to build a relationship with your customers. But keep in mind that just like meeting people in “real life”, building a relationship with your customer base happens over time. Building brand awareness and loyalty will also be a critical component of increasing revenue.
Finding new customers can cost five times more than selling to existing customers but 5% increase in retention (customers return to purchase or continue using your product or service) can drive a 25-95% increase in revenue. Through social media, customers can connect with brands, companies, and products in a way unlike ever before. This provides a unique opportunity for you to create brand loyalty through social media marketing.
Drive traffic – Social media can be an effective tool for driving traffic to a company’s website. By creating and sharing valuable content, a company can attract and engage users and ultimately direct them to their website. According to a study by Social Media Examiner, 72% of small businesses said that social media had helped them increase website traffic.
Additionally, Hubspot found that social media drives more than 31% of all referral traffic to websites. One way companies can drive traffic from social media is through the use of social media ads. These ads allow companies to target specific audiences and direct them to their website. Additionally, analytics and metrics can help companies track the effectiveness of their efforts and make adjustments as needed.
Lead generation – Simply put, generating a lead refers to the process of converting an interested party into a buyer. By creating and sharing valuable content, a company can attract and engage users and ultimately convert them into leads. 68% of marketers say social media helped them generate more leads, according to Exploding Topics.
The beauty of selling your product or service on social media is that the buy button or link to your website is conveniently placed in front of the viewer right at the same time they receive that dopamine spike from your visually pleasing and tailored advertisement, therefore increasing the likelihood that they will take action.
Instant feedback – Social media provides instant feedback for both audiences and companies. It allows for real-time communication and the ability to quickly gather opinions and insights from users. One way in which social media provides instant feedback for your audiences is through the use of features such as polls and surveys. These features allow audiences to share their opinions and provide feedback on a variety of topics.
For companies, social media provides instant feedback through features such as comments and reviews. By monitoring these, companies can quickly gather insight on customer satisfaction, brand perception, and potential issues. A study by BrightLocal found that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Engagement – Engaged customers are informed, customers. This means that they are aware of your brand and familiar with the products or services you offer. Because of this, they know that your brand provides the solution they need. Therefore, the more you keep them engaged, the more they are attracted to your business. Improved engagement can increase cross-sell revenue by 22%, up-sell revenue by 38% and order size by 5 to 85% depending on the quality of your product.
The Wrap-Up
Here at Peach Black, we refer to the end of each marketing campaign as the “Wrap-up”. In wrapping up this blog we want to encourage you to utilise the unique capabilities social media marketing can provide to your business. What’s the use of a toolbox when you don’t use the tools?
We understand that a lot of companies do not have the resources or time to learn how to effectively use social media in their marketing campaigns. We have good news for you, social media marketing is one of our specialities! We solely run social media campaigns for our clients but often also collaborate with their in-house marketing teams.
In the spirit of “Wrapping it up”, we have wrapped up a package specifically catered to businesses with social media marketing needs.
Social Package
- 1 Social Media Page Manager
- 2 Social Media Pages
- 8 Written Posts
- 8 Static Post Designs
- 1 Designed Cover Banner Update
- R200.00 Boosting Budget
