Launching a Social Media Campaign? Read This First

Whether you own a business, work as a brand manager, or have big plans to one day launch a multi-billion-dollar eCommerce business, social media marketing is likely to be a big part of your plans for connecting your brand with your target audience. 

Social platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, alone have billions of active monthly users. 

This means that by leveraging the power of these social networks, brands can potentially put their goods and services in front of a massive online audience. 

However, effective social media marketing is about far more than simply posting a few selfies and hoping they go viral. 

Therefore, we thought it’d be a good idea to create the following quick guide on what to ask yourself when planning your next social media marketing campaign. 

Where Does Your Brand Fit Into Your Industry? 

When planning any marketing or advertising campaigns, the very first step should always be to perform a bit of top-level industry research. 

You’ll want to learn about who your biggest competitors are, what type of content they’re using, and how effective they are at attracting, engaging, and converting paying customers. 

Learning about your competitors is essential, not only because it will help you understand where your brand fits in at an industry level. 

It will also allow you to determine your unique selling proposition, or USP, which is crucial to help you stand out from the competition, even when you’re both offering the same type of products or services. 

Essentially, your USP will explain to your potential customers why they should deal with you rather than turning to a competitor. 

Who Are Your Ideal Customers? 

If you want to sell to customers, you’ll need to think like your customers. 

In other words, you’ll need to find out as much as you can about your target audience, including their average age range, where they spend most of their time online, and what type of hobbies or interests they might have in common. 

One way to do this is to create a series of buyer personas, outlining a range of personality traits, pain points, and other information that will help you identify your ideal customers. 

Essentially, the more information you know about your target audience, the better you’ll be able to create content and craft marketing campaigns that cater to the needs of your audience. 

In turn, this translates to a better brand reputation, increased trust between you and your social followers, and, hopefully, more sales for your business. 

Is My Branding Consistent And Relatable? 

After you’ve determined your market positioning and you’ve studied your ideal customers, it’s time to get busy being active, engaged, and sharing content to your social feeds. 

However, before you get too far, you’ll want to ask yourself whether or not the logos, imagery, graphics, tone of voice, and messaging used are in line with your brand, as well as your overall marketing goals. 

Consistent branding isn’t just about making your business look pretty! 

It’s about making your content memorable and recognizable. 

So that, when a follower sees something you’ve posted, they’ll almost instantly think of your brand and its products or services. 

You can create custom logos and designs using a free logo maker. 

Planning Effective Social Media Campaigns

Of course, these are only a few questions you should be asking yourself before diving headfirst into the world of social media marketing. 

However, the more research and planning you put into your campaigns, the more likely you’ll be to succeed in accomplishing your goals. 

So get busy learning about your industry, studying your target audience, and fine-tuning your business branding, and you’ll be well on your way to social media marketing success! 

Thanks for reading and re-joining Pen and Prosper.

Thoughts? Comments? 

Guest Post provided by LANETTE SCHNUR

Photo credits: Pixabay.com