Why Social Media Marketing Success Depends On A Sound Strategy

The fundamental ingredient for doing social media marketing well is making sure that you have a strategy. Without a strategy, you could be posting on social media platforms merely for the sake of posting. Without understanding what your specific goals are, who your target audience is, in addition to what they want, it’ll be difficult to achieve results on social media. Whether you would like to grow your brand through social media or merely to level up as a social media marketer, putting together a social media marketing strategy is essential.

What Makes A Good Social Media Strategy?

Every brand and company needs a custom social media strategy that is based on their current social media standing, goals as well as resources that are available to them. And while everything that happens in social media tends to hinge on a number of independent factors, there are some universal, fundamental building blocks which you need to have in place to make sure that your company can get the most out of its social media initiatives.

Here are some fundamentals of a great social media strategy:

• Creating an audience persona
• Goal-setting and objectives
• Budgeting
• Resourcing/team building
• Research
• Selecting your platforms
• Putting together content
• Integrating with your digital strategy as a whole

Buying Decisions Are Influenced By Social Media

If the first era of social was all about audience-building as well as engagement. The current era is focused on commerce in addition to personalisation.

All of the major platforms have heavily invested in their advertising solutions in order to lure marketers with the promise of enhanced APIs and smart targeting. This includes the ability to upload email lists so that personalised re-marketing campaigns can be run.

Recent research has revealed that 64% of people surveyed use social in order to find inspiration for retail. This is driven by retailers who target consumers with personalised offers as well as deals on social networks.

Almost half (46%) of social media users are already making use of social platforms when they think about making a purchase. A total of 40% of users are actively deciding what to buy based on what they have seen on social media platforms. This includes reviews as well as recommendations, and this figure is only set to grow.

Not Having A Social Media Strategy Gives Power To Your Competitors

It’s uncommon to find an organisation that doesn’t have a social presence. Increasingly, companies are developing clear social strategies that are aligned with business goals.

A social media marketer with a strategy has a framework through which to plan, prioritise, execute, measure as well as optimise. This typically will lead to better results as the activity has direction, even if the direction needs to develop and change as the marketer learns from real data.

If you invest in a social media presence without a clear strategy, you won’t know if your campaigns are successful. For instance, if you just post content to appear active, how do you know that content is contributing to the business positively? What if it’s actually putting people off your brand?

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you want to learn more about social media marketing then you need to do our Social Media Marketing Course. For more information, please follow this link.