Social Media: The Best Marketing Tactics
With the advent of home computers in the 80s, social media exploded onto screens in 1997. That’s when a site called Six Degrees created an environment for users to upload profiles and make friends. Fast forward to the 21st century. Social media is now the most popular way for people to communicate and share their stories.
And if you own a business, you’re aware that unless you find innovative ways to reach customers, sales plummet. You could always hire staff that could handle your social platforms, invests in software to track how well you’re doing on social media or give your business’ Facebook page a new look, but none of those options are free.
What if there was a surefire way to keep your business in the limelight without slashing your budget?
Well… there is.
Drive your business’s sales by using proven marketing tactics. In the meantime, let’s learn some interesting statistics about social media.
Your Business Needs to Tap Into Social Media
Social media platforms continue to trend. In 2019, Emarsys, one of the largest independent marketing platforms in the world, reported that there are 3.2 billion users worldwide. That’s a whopping 42% of the population.
People spend a lot of time each day using some form of interactive social media.
Additionally, they found that smarter social targeting leads to re-engagement or more social contacts in the future. Essentially, there’s unlimited potential to build a following for your brand and attract attention to reach new customers.
How Marketing Tactics Transform Your Business When Using These Platforms
There are many social platforms out there, but if you use the most popular and the ones where your clients are, you’ll most definitely start getting a following.
Facebook is the top social networking site it reaches approximately 2 billion users. Used by small, medium-sized, and large businesses, you can reach customers anywhere in the world.
Pros:
- You can use this network, it doesn’t matter what type of business you have. Examples include retail sales, cafes, and restaurants, health and community services, construction, finance and insurance, property and business services, just to name a few.
- Businesses can market their products and services to reach specific audiences in the most important demographics. On average worldwide, 53% of users are female/47% male, 87% are between 18-29 years old, and 68% of users are college-educated.
- When using Facebook, you can set up a business page to highlight milestones or events and provide business details to include your hours and contact information. A creative way to promote your business is to design a community page for customers to post pictures and videos when they use your products.
- With Facebook ads, you can target customers by age, interests, and location. By doing so, you create brand awareness, increase web traffic and can potentially increase off-line sales and leads.
- Other benefits of using Facebook for hypermedia include: reaching mobile users, promoting marketing campaigns, and using Facebook apps for e-commerce, surveys, or teleconferences.
Cons:
- Your business runs the risk of people posting spam and negative comments. They may post false statements about your business which could harm how real customers view your company.
- If you’re on a tight budget, you may not have enough money for Facebook advertising.
- It can take considerable time to engage with customers in real-time. You may need to hire a social media expert to manage your FB pages.
Any entrepreneur can use Instagram to visually showcase their business using profile features found within a business account. Popular businesses include photographers, food bloggers, makeup artists, graphic designers, webinar hosts, Instagram consultants, and fitness coaches.
Pros:
- The network integrates with Facebook and Twitter accounts so you can improve customer experience.
- You can use visual content to market your brand by posting content that’s beautiful and interactive. Bakeries can post each day’s freshly baked items or a surf shop can post a video demonstrating their products at the beach.
For example, rather than post pictures of shoes, Nike spotlights how athletes excel at sports. Go Pro takes viewers on adventures highlighting the benefits of using their equipment. Pottery Barn posts pictures of real customers using their products in their homes.
- Instead of using words to explain how your product or service works, tell a story using images. You’ll engage customers quicker and leave a lasting impression that could convince them to pull out their wallets.
- You can use Instagram’s feature called “Shoppable Posts” to add tags to products so customers can shop online.
- Since the media platform works seamlessly on smartphones, businesses can reach customers on the go.
Cons:
- The quality of your images is what motivates customers and attracts followers. The most effective Instagram images are square so if you post one that’s not, it might look sloppy.
- There’s a limited number of characters for captions so advertising may prove to be more difficult.
- Using too many hashtags could result in having your account banned.
Businesses use Twitter because it’s one of the best platforms to improve customer service. Any business can use the platform to build a community of followers, generate leads and sales, and have conversations with customers to solve problems.
Pros:
- This social app is easier to use than Facebook because there are fewer navigation buttons to use. Basically, you can like, follow, bookmark, tweet, and retweet posts to explore the site with ease. Less tech-savvy customers can concentrate on your content rather than be overwhelmed with features.
- You can add links to your content, and post videos and photos that relate to the products you market.
- The direct messaging feature provides a way to communicate with customers.
- Every tweet that you post is indexed by search engines. You optimize your business’s online exposure by using searchable keywords.
- You can use Twitter’s features to optimize your media outreach campaign by showing off your products.
- Furthermore, you can promote your account on Twitter through paid programs like promoted tweets and trends as well as other Twitter marketing tools.
Cons:
- Currently, your messages are limited to 280 characters so crafting a message from your business can be tricky.
- Spam accounts abound on Twitter so it takes considerable time to monitor accounts and fake followers.
What’s Your Next Step?
When customers can view, click, and share, they become social media promoters for your business.
Using social media marketing tactics creates a buzz about your products and services which translates into more sales. Not only will your revenue increase, but you can build life-long relationships with buyers.
There’s only one thing left to do.
Find out how implementing marketing tactics takes your company from slow to go.
We hope you enjoyed this promoted piece as much as we did!
