Why Social Media Marketing Might Not Be Enough for Your Brand
Reaching new customers and selecting a highly targeted audience works well with social media marketing. Unfortunately, there are also some limitations to marketing on various platforms that require you to rethink your overall promotional strategy and advertising approach.
How Can Social Media Marketing Damage a Brand?
Experts predict social media advertising will top $200 billion by 2024. As people become more and more comfortable with a social presence, the temptation to crack jokes or say things that might be taken the wrong way increases. CEOs and company leaders can do a lot of damage to a brand’s reputation simply by making an ill-placed comment.
Still, with the ability to narrow down an audience and advertise for cheap rates while seeing an excellent return on investment (ROI), more and more brands add to their social media marketing budgets every year. Knowing where it works and what else you need to do to continue growing your brand puts you above your competition.
Here are the things you can do to both enhance social media marketing and build your brand in other ways.
1. Expand to Other Areas
Social media marketing is an excellent place to start and gain new followers, buzz and name recognition. However, it isn’t enough by itself to develop lasting relationships. The noise on most social platforms is overwhelming.
For example, if one goes to a page on TikTok, it is very easy to swipe and see the next video. Before you know it, you’ve gone down some rabbit hole completely unrelated to where you started. Sometimes you just need to come face-to-face with your audience. Get out to local art fairs and pass out promotional materials. Host an event at your store. Find ways to reach new customers one at a time.
2. Measure ROI
Find the right formula to calculate your return on investment (ROI). Just because social media marketing is successful for your mentor or a friend’s business doesn’t mean it will be for yours. When you have a firm handle on the numbers, you can decide which efforts to maintain and which to let go.
Pay attention to how well social platforms perform compared to other efforts such as newsletter outreach, search engine optimization (SEO) and local events. You might also find that some platforms work better for your product or service than others.
3. Create a Personal Connection
No matter what promotional effort you make, take things to a personal level. Create buyer personas to represent your typical customer. You can use the persona for social media as well as other types of advertising you do online and offline.
Always respond to people when they message you either on your social pages or send an email, etc. The more they feel connected to your brand, the more likely they are to recommend it to others.
4. Sprinkle in Reviews
Your social media page might be hopping but if customers can’t locate reviews on your brand, they may not trust you to follow through. Facebook and TikTok are both notorious for advertising products that look fantastic but fall flat in reality. Around 97% of online shoppers now read reviews before buying.
You can add a reviews tab to some of your social media, but you’ll also want to seek out mentions on other review sites, depending on the type of business you run. Google Business pages allow people to send feedback your way, for example. Restaurants might benefit from Yelp mentions.
Reviews can be meshed with social media marketing campaigns for a whole picture of your company and what you do.
5. Improve Page Rank
How does your site stack up against the competition? Over 90% of online queries begin with a search engine, and around half of your traffic will come from the same. If you aren’t creating the content and pages to drive traffic to your site, you’re missing out on sales.
We have some good news, though. You can use content both to improve your page rank for crucial keywords but also for sharing on social media. The more attention a topic gets, the better for your brand.
Look at the pain points your customers typically come to you to solve. What types of search terms might they look for to find an answer to the issue? Once you have an idea, write the articles that answer the questions and use excellent SEO practices to drive traffic from Google, Bing and other search engines.
Should You Stretch Beyond Social Media Marketing Efforts?
Yes! Social platforms are an excellent way to reach a core audience quickly and cheaply. However, if you want to grow across all areas, you must ramp up your efforts in SEO, in-person events and content marketing.
Think about your social media campaigns as an extension of the other promotions you offer. If you write a new article, share it on social media. If you create a viral post, send visitors to a link on your site. In a perfect world, every effort would mesh together and create the perfect situation for finding new customers while retaining current ones.
