Social media marketing is an investment with awesome returns. The result and measurement is most commonly called social media ROI.
If you figure out the best tactics to reach your audience on social media, you’ll sell the brand by a mile.
Social media marketing is all about your target customers and audiences, and their interaction level with your brand. The fruits of social media marketing reap high benefits and profits; however, your strategy will differ depending on the social media platform your audience spends maximum time on.
Suppose, you have a product and you want to sell its multiple copies in the market. Considering the humongous benefits of social media marketing, you centralize your strategy around the plethora of social media platforms. All you have to do is pick the right channel, locate your audience, and start building your customer pool. Sounds easy, right!
It is not!
Every social media marketing strategy is unique and creative. Your content is tailored to a specific platform and ultimately, that boosts your conversions and aids in brand awareness.
But, why is social media marketing important?
Well, there was a decade when traditional marketing formed the basis of sales and revenue funnel of a company. But now, times have changed. Digital presence is everything. Be it a big brand, an enterprise, or an SMB, every company requires a social presence to attract customers.
Why?
Due to the 2.95 billion social media users around the world!
Where older marketing tactics were focused on maybe thousands of users at a time, with an apt social media marketing strategy, you can attend to millions of customers at the same time. The unbelievable power of social media has replaced conventional marketing plans, taking over bigger budget margins in organizations.
Now, your next question is, which platforms can result in most social media marketing ROI?
Well, for starters, there are far more social media channels than the above-mentioned. Facebook tops the chart with more than 2 billion users worldwide. It is followed by the most consumed form of the video channel, YouTube with over 1 billion active users. A tough competitor in the list, Instagram is quickly gaining widespread attention owing to its excellent features and its mastery in influencer marketing with more than 500 million users. Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest also offer a good audience base of more than 200 million users globally. The newbie, TikTok has garnered quite a fan base since its launch and is quickly establishing its name as an important social media channel.
With this said, the most popular B2C marketing channels are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok.
For B2B social media marketing, LinkedIn and Twitter are a good choice.
The Ultimate Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Now that we have detailed the fundamental social media platforms, let’s discuss why social media marketing is beneficial for your business.
Although there are several advantages of social media marketing, we’ll list the top four most beneficial reasons to consider.
Brand Awareness and Endorsements
As a brand, the more people know your name, the merrier are the sales and revenue quotient. Due to the sheer amount of people on social media, you can understand why businesses want to invest in curating killer content and graphics related to their products. Social media has the power to improve brand awareness and grow your business.
Social media boosts brand awareness by driving engagement. Social media engagement, in the form of comments, likes, shares, and re-posts helps in increasing brand knowledge by directing traffic to your website. You can add direct links to your website in the profile section, bio, or as a post description.
Lead Generation
When you promote or share your product on social media, every customer that finds it intriguing, is a lead for you. With time, these customers complete the purchasing process, therefore, boosting the lead conversion ratio.
Social media is a great tool for generating leads and increasing sales. The trick is to engage the right customers through your posts. There are several ways you can indulge in social media lead generation prospects.
Organize giveaways, include links to your website and offers, host live videos, list your products through your social profiles, and try paid marketing services.
Fostering a Connection with your Customers through Social Listening
A customer has the final say in your brand’s success. So, until you impress your audience, you cannot ace your social media marketing skills. Start by connecting with your social media followers. Interact with them. Reply to their comments. Build lost lasting relationships with your customers. Ask your followers’ some questions, enticing them to reply more often to your posts. Understand their pain points. Show them you care and value their input and support.
The more you interact with your followers/customers, the more they’ll stay loyal to your brand. Your customers can also act as personal recommendation, references, and influencers on social media.
Tell your Brand’s Story
You can use social media to share your brand’s mission and message. Effective stories can have a big impact on your brand’s image. You can choose what type of stories you want to promote and share them depending on your customer base.
For example, this post by Dove celebrates beauty in every form, no matter the bumps, scars, and color. It has a very simple message yet is highly impactful. Such posts can help you engage audiences worldwide.
Image Credits: Twitter
Another great example from Shane Barker’s (a digital marketing consultant) post on Millennials and Influencers, is of American lingerie retail company, Aerie. They often collaborate with micro and nano-influencers to spread awareness about the body positivity movement. They encourage people to embrace their bodies and be comfortable in their own skin. This strengthens their brand’s image as one that believes in embracing beauty in all shapes and sizes.
What is Social Media ROI?
Proceeding further to a very important discussion, what is social media ROI?
ROI means a return on investment.
A lot of people use the term ROI for end results which is very inaccurate. ROI is a financial mathematical equation that calculates the money you earn minus what you spend to earn that money, divided by how much you spent.
The formula is as follows.
ROI= (money earned-money spent)/ how much you spent.
For example, you spent $500 and you earned $1000. So, your ROI will be calculated as (1000-500)/5000= 100%. This means, for every dollar you put in, you earned two dollars.
Although it might sound like a simple concept, it does flood a gigantic pool of questions.
So, social media marketing ROI can be defined in three ways, depending on the type of return you are looking for.
Monetary return: the most straightforward interpretation is a monetary return, measured in revenue or profits. It refers to the products/services sold in return for the social media marketing campaign budget.
Marketing impact: it refers to measuring your return through marketing metrics. In this model, you are justifying the marketing expenses with your brand marketing measurements.
Business impact: it refers to returns with strategic business priority. Social media is mostly referred to as a marketing channel, but it does support other departments too. Your social media-driven impacts can be related to a lift in the market share, profitability, increase in key hires, rise in employee engagement, and improvement in customer advocacy.
Hopefully, you now have a clear picture about social media marketing ROI. Always remember, it is not always related to monetary benefits or investments.
How to Increase Social Media ROI?
So, your social media marketing ROI is a broke!
It doesn’t mean that you can’t fix it.
As compelling the idea of promoting your brand on social media is, it is a tedious process.
For any brand, having an effective social media strategy is critical for success, engagement, sales, revenue, and all the other goals too.
Here is a list of the top practices that can help you increase your brand’s social media ROI.
Awesome Content is the Key
As obvious as it sounds, crafting killer content is not that easy. Most brands don’t know what their readers are interested in, therefore, lack the authentic, relevant, and praiseworthy content that adds value to the customers.
Remember the Golden 80-20 rule, 80% organic and value-oriented content, and 20% promotional content.
While scribbling good content, keep the following points in mind:
• Use content that relates to your followers/customers
• Make it as engaging as you can. Add images, videos, infographics, memes, etc.
• Always write fresh and original content
• Post something related to a calendar event so that your customers can be a part of it
• Every platform has a different audience base, hence, requiring varied content ideas
Research your Target Audience
The most common reason for an unsuccessful social media ROI is, the lack of resonation with the right audience. You probably might get good leads and a few worthy conversions, but the sustainability of a brand is dependent on its customers, and just a few numbers don’t work.
The most successful brands interact, create, and nurture customer relationships. So, you need to do the same.
The following are some key takeaways on various social media platforms:
Facebook and YouTube is a prime hub for ads.
Instagram’s audience is mainly composed of millennials and Gen Z, signaling the strength and boldness of the platform.
Women outnumber Pinterest’s audience than men.
LinkedIn’s user base is very well educated, making it a hub for industry-specific and high-quality content.
Twitter is more of a professional platform and it is still nurturing its potential as a social media marketing channel.
See, how a single platform cannot fulfill all your requirements?
The same way, no one platform can suffice your customer pool.
The idea is to research your audience for each platform well enough, and then sell them your products and services. The more you know about your customers and their interests, the more easily you can approach them.
Everything has a Right Time, so does your Posts
Timeliness is a very important note for all the B2B social media lead generation marketers. You can’t expect the customers to operate according to your timeline. So, you should adjust yours.
How can you do that?
Well, it’s easy. Post at a time when you will receive maximum engagement from the customers. Communicate at the right time with them. Research the social timeline of your area when you can achieve limitless attention to your post.
For example, the following is an image from Sprout Social entailing the best engagement times for audiences on Facebook. Every platform has a preferable time slot. And, when you post, keeping that clock in mind, you can garner maximum reception from your users.
Coming to the second part of this context, respond to your customers’ queries, comments, reviews, and complaints ASAP. You cannot network well with the customers if you don’t invite them for meaningful conversations. Make them feel valued with an early response time.
Assess What’s Working and What’s Not
By now, you might have a better understanding of how to forge a rewarding social media marketing strategy. Just like the evolving market, your plan should be dynamic. You need to adapt your strategy for sudden changes throughout the year.
Analyze your efforts continuously. You never know which social media activity puts your brand into a customer’s perspective. Moreover, study whether the social media marketing strategies are fulfilling your goals or not.
Use the Right Tracking Tools
To measure, track, and gain audience insights you need tools that can let you extract every dollar from your strategy. Lucky for you, there are several free and paid social media monitoring tools available that can strengthen your strategy even further.
Make the Most of your Social Media ROI
Social media marketing is a bullfight. To win it over, you need to control the bull (social media) and use it for your brand’s advantage. I hope this guide serves you as much-needed inspiration for figuring out your social media ROI.
What do you think about these tips and tricks? Let us know in the comments below.
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