How can businesses use social media marketing?

By the end of 2019, it is estimated that there will be 2.77 billion social media users worldwide. Furthermore, it is said that the majority of consumers research a purchase on social media before they buy anything online or in a bricks-and-mortar store.

This is a massive potential marketing audience for businesses to tap into. However, social media marketing is not as easy as just making a couple of posts on any-old social media platform and hoping for the best. The days of such a spray-and-pray approach to marketing are long gone as now companies are able to draw actionable insights from their digital marketing efforts that they are able to transpose onto other similar campaigns in the future.

So then the question is how can a business use social media marketing in order to ramp up their lead generation and – ultimately – their sales? Before we answer this question, there are a number of fundamentals that you need to deal with. In this article, we’ll cover some of these.

Social Media Marketing for Businesses

Are you B2B or B2C?

The first thing that you’ll need to establish is if you’re a B2B or a B2C company. There’s no doubt that social media marketing will work for you, however this is dependent on whether or not you’re using the right channel:

• A B2B brand needs to find its home on LinkedIn. As this is the premier business to business networking site, members are spending time on this channel in a business mindset. They are open to talking about new business opportunities and are more receptive to what you have to say. This means that if you’re a B2B brand, you need to be on LinkedIn. This is not to say that B2B brands don’t have a home on B2C channels such as Facebook but the strategy that you adopt on these channels is totally different to LinkedIn.

• A B2C brand needs to be on Facebook. On this channel, people are in a relaxed mindset and are more likely to seriously consider buying the new pair of running shoes that they see pop up in their newsfeed. It’s also been shown that the click-through rate, of people to your website, is much higher than from any other social network. This means that Facebook is a phenomenal way of getting traffic to your website.

Pick your demographic correctly

Now that you’ve chosen which social media channel that you want to use for your social media marketing, you now need to define who your target market is so that you can plug these demographics into the social media campaigns that you’re running.

Choosing the right audience is crucial because if you don’t, you won’t get a great response – if you get a response at all. So make sure that you choose this wisely. Remember that because you’re dealing with people, digital marketing is never an exact science so once you’ve chosen a demographic for your social media marketing you may find yourself in a situation of having to change this because you’re not getting the results that you want.

If this happens, don’t stress! Change it up and experiment until you find the right mix.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to know more about how to use social media correctly for your business? The Digital School of Marketing’s Social Media Marketing Course is the best qualification to help you get there. For more information about this and our other digital marketing courses, please visit our website.