Social Media Marketing – How To Set Up A Successful Social Media Campaign?

In this digital age, it is imperative for businesses to tap into the infinite potential of social media to drive growth. With billions of monthly users, social media is a powerful tool for businesses to reach and connect with prospects and customers. Social media is a very competitive space. It can be a strenuous task to stand out amidst all the white noise. A dynamic social media marketing strategy can really help companies to achieve their marketing goals.

Engaging proactively with customers on social media can contribute to brand awareness and create a positive brand association. It is well established that constant communication with customers is a necessity for an enhanced customer experience. Social media provides companies with the opportunity to interact with their audience and build relationships.

The immense reach of these platforms has made social media campaigns a critical marketing technique. In fact, social media advertising is projected to reach $49 billion by 2021.  An effective social media campaign must be strategically designed to help businesses connect with their target audience, develop customer relationships, and drive long-term sales.

Steps to set up a successful social media campaign

1. Research your competitors
To design a social media campaign, do thorough research on your competitors. By analyzing the competition you can gather vital insights, which can help you improve your campaign. A competitor analysis will help you determine what keywords or social media techniques are working for them, and you can implement those to your advantage. Tracking the user engagement of your competitor’s social posts can help you understand what kind of posts are generating an enthusiastic response from the audience. Such details can help you craft a better campaign and gain a competitive edge.

2. Research your target audience
Understanding your target audience will help you create highly relevant content that appeals to your audience. The objective here is to convert your social media followers into your customers. When it comes to your target audience, it’s important to have vital consumer information such as age, gender, location, average income, typical job title or industry, interests, etc. Social media analytics can provide valuable information about your followers- who they are, where they live, and how they interact with your brand. To appeal to your audience, you must keep up with current trends, and incorporate them into your social posts. Creating dynamic and user-generated content can help enhance user engagement. With stiff competition, it is vital that your content must be authentic, creative, and most importantly it must reflect the interest of your audience. 

3. Develop a campaign strategy
To develop a campaign strategy, you must set campaign goals that your brand seeks to achieve. A SMART goal framework can help you establish the objectives of your marketing campaign. Each goal should be- 

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Once the objectives are set, the next step is to select the most meaningful metrics to track and monitor to evaluate the success of your campaign. Metrics like click-through rates, engagement, traffic and conversion rates can help you analyse the performance of your campaign and make adjustments accordingly. 

4. Promote your content
Depending on the platform you are promoting on, the content must be designed to fit that social platform. If it’s image-based content, Instagram would be the right choice. For live streaming and video content, Facebook would be a better option for you. Every piece of content must be promoted on multiple platforms using the appropriate format that fits each platform for maximum visibility. Repeating the same message across multiple platforms allows users to retain your message better. It is also important to note that the tone, voice and style of the message must be consistent across all platforms. Keeping the brand identity intact is essential to create brand awareness. When promoting content on social media, there must be a balance between promotional and non-promotional content to upkeep user interest and engagement. Aggressive promotion tends to drive away prospects as they don’t like feeling pressured to become customers. Hence striking a delicate balance between the two types of content can help you achieve better results.

5. Engage with your customers regularly
Engaging with your customers regularly will enhance your customer’s brand experience. A great brand experience is a stepping stone to creating brand loyalty and advocacy. Through the use of social listening tools, you can find out what others are saying about your brand. Being part of the conversation is important because it provides you with an opportunity to show your gratitude towards your customers and also turn a negative experience into a positive one. Engaging with customers one-on-one on social media helps to enhance customer experience which encourages them to invest their time on you and not your competitors. Social media platforms offer brands a great opportunity to not only connect with their audience but also address their pain points. Listening and monitoring your customers’ feedback on social platforms can truly help you refine your campaign. To give your audience a genuinely bespoke experience you must listen to what they have to say. 

6. Create a social media content calendar
While creating and sharing great content is essential for user engagement, it is equally important to determine when to post the content to achieve maximum impact. A social media content calendar can help you plan all your social media activities. It will help you keep track of dates and times for the content to be published to multiple platforms. A scheduling tool like Hootsuite, Crowdfire, and Coschedule allow marketers to schedule and save posts ahead of time to ensure greater efficiency. These analytical tools also have features that allow you to measure engagement on your social posts. 

7. Evaluate your strategy
Once you go live, monitoring the campaign routinely can document the progress and performance of your social media marketing efforts. Evaluating your campaign will be helpful in identifying which strategies are working better and which are not. Removing redundant strategies will save you time and money, and redirect your focus to more engaging attributes. Using analytical tools, you can keep track of different KPIs in real-time. This data is valuable as it enables businesses to develop better marketing campaigns. Constant testing and evaluating will help you understand what works best for your target audience. Tracking and analyzing the engagement on each post will help refine your campaign strategy, and enhance your retention and conversion rate.

Final Thoughts

Social media is a great tool to connect with your audience and create buzz around your brand. Social media marketing strategies will need to keep up with evolving consumer behavior. At Alkye, we help our clients to create, monitor and refine their social media campaigns to help them become a recognizable brand on social media.