Social media has given businesses a new tool to connect and market to a wide variety of demographics. The investment in social media isn’t about if, but how. These five tips blend organic and paid tactics into one holistic approach. As a small business, you can choose to only focus on paid or organic social media, however, when both avenues are a priority you will have a better opportunity to turn a target audience member into a customer.
Say someone sees a paid social media ad and then visits your page. If you do not have the right organic content on your page, you will lose their trust or interest that you are a reputable brand. If you only use organic, you might get them to follow you, but you have no way of guiding them through the customer journey and to a final purchase.
Have An Organic Presence
Having an organic presence does not mean just posting content. You will want to create a content calendar and have specific messaging or a goal behind each one. If you do not have a planned out calendar you may end up posting too little and people will forget about you, or if you are posting too much, people may unfollow you.
Thinking through the messaging is equally important to the frequency. You are building your brand and your community cares about what you say. Use the platform to tell them who you are and why they need your products or services. Making sure that the messaging matches your audience will help ensure that you are positively connecting with your potential customers.
Engage With Your Audience
Engaging with your audience is not just responding to direct messages. It is engaging in comments, sharing their posts with your products — cultivating a relationship with your followers. People love brands that care about their customers, engaging with them in your posts, and DMs will only help build brand loyalty. Consumers are also using these platforms to share products and services that they use and love with their own audience. Reposting those to your stories can help you build trust through testimonials.
Test Out Several Audiences
When it comes to the paid side of social media marketing, one place we see companies plateau is when they are too focused on one audience. Just because the majority of your customers are from one demographic, does not mean there are no other audiences that you should be trying to target. We have helped businesses expand their reach by stepping outside who their current customer was and found stronger audiences that have aligned with their product or service. Make a list of any audience that might have potential and be willing to test them out — you might be surprised by the results.
Guide Your Customers Through The Customer Journey
Every customer needs to be guided through each step of the customer journey. Very few people will see an ad once and go to your site to purchase. They need to see several ads, then they might click on one that takes them to your website and they still might not purchase. They then need retargeting ads to continue to guide them back to the site.
Each step may have different messaging or creatives to deliver the right message at the right time. This is all about seeing how your consumers interact with your ads, your organic posts, and your website, in order to give them the information they need to feel confident about purchasing.
Quality Content
Make sure that your content is visually appealing and attention-grabbing. You have only milliseconds to catch someone’s eye as they are scrolling through their social media feed. Stopping is an inconvenience. Therefore, whether it is an organic post or a paid ad, you need to have content that jumps off the page, is audience relevant, and helps build trust in your company.