How do you craft a social media marketing strategy?

A question which is often asked! The question usually comes from a client’s awareness of the benefits of using social media to market their business but not being quite sure how to measure the value when they have specific projects in mind.

So, where do you start? At Blue Lizard Marketing, we work with customers to define their company goals first. Together we set you social media goals to align with your company objectives, just as you would with other marketing activities you have planned. I work with a number of social media and content creation guru's who can form your social media team, so we work together to develop the best strategy for you. We think about the whole company and how working with the various social media platforms will benefit you. We evaluate audiences, potential customers and methods of promotion available, along with the content required, whether that is written, a batch of new images or video.

The goals can be fairly wide or very specific. If you are in a start-up business, you may still be at the stage where you are looking to build audiences and awareness. At little further down the line, you could be looking to reach very specific goals, such as launching a new product, increasing customers in particular sectors or expanding into a new market altogether.

The next step is to break your goals into defined actions which are planned to help you reach the targets you have set. If we take the example of a client wanting to launch a new product, we would look at running social media campaigns to promote the fact that the product is soon to be available, promote its key benefits and features to customers, raise awareness by developing its own hashtag, connect with ‘influencers’ and drive engagement by offering initial incentives.

We would also look at ways of driving customers to the website through sponsored posts or initial offers or competitions. For example, brands are using Snapchat to provide exclusive, limited-time opportunities to fans, closing the gap between virtual and in-store retail experiences. Others are offering samples and ‘try before you buy’ options which are perfect for social media channels. Pre-launch tasters often bring engagement and create buzz, so sneaky videos or shots which reveal a little but not all of your new product can be fun and effective.

Finally, we create a timetable with priorities and responsibilities clearly outlined – and off we go! We do build in checks and we do tweak and revise as we go. Social media marketing is flexible as you have the ability to switch promotions on or off instantly as you evaluate their success.

If your business is a start-up, or does not have any defined goals, you can still use social media marketing to directly impact your company by connecting with your overall marketing goals.

Here are a few ideas for more generic goals and metrics you could focus on:

• Driving traffic to your website

• Referral traffic from your social media platforms, which will show on your Google Analytics

• Clicks on social media posts

• Bounce rates from social media traffic

• Increasing your brand awareness

• Shares or retweets

• Increase in follower/like counts

• Reach of posts

• Increase in engagement – comments, shares, replies, likes

• New lead generation

• Lead collection through your social media

• Downloads of any promoted content

• Conversion rates of leads through your social media, again showing via Google Analytics

• Direct sales

• Sign-ups increase

• Increase in your revenue directly correlated to your social media posts, via your conversion goals on Google Analytics

• Community building

• Engagement – number of likes, comments, users, retweets, replies or shares

If you need a little help with your social media strategy or your overall marketing plans, get in touch and we can set you off on the right track.