Social Media Marketing that Maximizes ROI

Social media marketing is vital for any business. Without it, your potential is inhibited. Over half of the global population use these platforms daily, so harnessing them is crucial for long-term success. High-quality marketing is a powerhouse that propels business growth.

Promotional campaigns are multichannel endeavors. They require meticulous planning, implementation, and monitoring. Thriving businesses use versatile systems like aitarget.com to promote their services on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Maximize the payoff by following the 10 rules outlined below.

1. Identify Your Goals 

Any successful project starts with clear and relevant goals. What are you going to achieve with your marketing investment? To make sure your strategy is realistic, use the SMART goal-setting methodology. Your objectives must be:

• Specific, so “getting more business” won’t work.
• Measurable, so you can see if your promotion has allowed you to reach the target.
• Attainable, as unrealistic goals are only demoralizing.
• Relevant, as your efforts and their results should tie into your wider marketing strategy.
• Timely, so you can ensure accountability for the goals.

Getting started on social media is a large project. For convenience, split it into a set of small goals, each with its own deadline. Once your objectives are clear, you are ready to define the target audience.

2. Identify Your Audience

Now, the question is “whose attention do you want to capture on social media?” Any message must be tailored to the perception of the target audience. You will never succeed without a clear buyer persona. To create it, use three sources of insights.

• Review satisfied customers who have used your company’s products or services. Look at their background — industries, demographics, and goals. 
• Identify problems your products solve for this audience. How do they make their jobs or lives easier?
• Collect opinions from your customer support employees. What questions do they hear most often? These people are your frontline staff, so their experience is invaluable.

3. Select the Best Platforms

On the one hand, the more platforms you engage, the more people you can reach. At the same time, this approach is untargeted and wasteful. Your brand does not need a presence on all networks — it only needs the ones its audience prefers. Working across social media for the sake of omnipresence will only make you overwhelmed.

• If you are planning to sell directly to users, Facebook marketing is key. To reach out to a younger generation, use Instagram or Snapchat. LinkedIn is best for B2B marketing. Think about the people who need your products and services and their patterns of social media use.
• Look at your competitors, too. What channels have they chosen? Examine their profiles and followers. Choose channels where their rate of engagement is the highest. 
• Remember that social media marketing is a time-consuming undertaking. Limiting your work to one or two platforms is perfectly acceptable if you truly invest in them. Do not spread your message too thin.

4. Hire an Expert 

Choose your social media manager carefully. Do not hire someone because of the lowest hourly rate or the lightest schedule. This work requires specific qualities and expertise. Your perfect manager will:

• be a strategic thinker;
• understand how to choose content, lay out posts, and engage with followers effectively;
• have strong organizational skills;
• manage their time and schedule posts well;
• have perfect language skills;
• offer branding expertise, as their work will define your company’s “voice”; 
• understand the brand at a granular level;
• be professional in all situations.

5. Deliver Consistently

Keep your social media presence nurtured. First, bear your buyer persona in mind when creating and sharing anything. If you keep posting something for sales all the time, the audience will lose interest. Provide them with valuable information. Integrating webinar invites or white papers is a good idea.

Secondly, fill your social media calendar with curated content. This includes industry updates and articles written by experts outside your company. Finally, listen to your competitors and their audience. These insights will tell you what you should and should not be sharing.

6. Woo Influencers

Acknowledge the power of influencers and harness it. Almost half of all buyers make purchasing decisions based on influencer reviews. These users are trusted by thousands or millions of consumers. Leverage their established credibility to promote your brand. Here is how to get started:

• Identify influencers with a large social media following, and choose the ones whose content is relevant to your offers.
• Contact the users to build relationships with them. 
• Extend your offer, stressing the benefits for the influencer.
• Monitor their posts to see if the representation is cohesive to your image.
• Keep a direct channel of communication to avoid unpleasant surprises.

7. Grow Your Audience

Your manager must boost the follower count across all relevant channels. There are several ways to go about it.

• Making sure satisfied existing customers follow you.
• Posting diverse fresh content, including product updates and industry information to prompt new purchases.
• Encouraging your content fans to subscribe to your page, so they can get future updates.
• Organizing a contest to attract new followers.
• Using paid advertisements for maximized exposure.

8. Engage Your Audience

Keep your existing and potential customers engaged by being responsive and broadcasting your brand’s personality. Social media marketing is not a one-way street. Follow these tips to inspire users. 

• Respond to the new followers personally, answer questions and resolve complaints quickly.
• Like and comment on other posts. 
• If you post content to encourage a specific action, remember to include relevant links. These CTAs may lead to your website, blogs, or other resources. 
• Use hashtags to help your audience cut through the social media noise.

9. Measure Your Results

Never lose sight of your goals. Remember the SMART system? Your objectives must be quantifiable, so you know which techniques are paying off and which have failed. Pay attention to these metrics:

• new followers (their number should grow consistently);
• likes/shares/comments (these reflect engagement);
• clicks (this show how the social media efforts translate into sales);
• downloads (downloads of valuable content like ebooks is a positive sign);
• leads (eventually, your promotion must lead to an increase in the number of qualified leads).

10. Rinse. Repeat.

These metrics will tell you where your campaign is heading, and how successful it has been so far. Use the analytical insights to polish your message and style. If a specific type of content creates more engagement, share more of it. If some content does better on one platform, make adjustments to your strategy. Eventually, your social media marketing efforts will pay off. With a balanced strategy, your ROI will shoot through the roof!