It’s no secret that social media is a great way for companies to develop their brand message and engage with new audiences. However, its power doesn’t stop there. Social media marketing offers terrific opportunities to drive sales and boost our ROIs. So, treat social media like your other email, SEO, and assorted media marketing campaigns, and leverage these resources to add momentum to your sales figures. We’ll go over the latest trends in social media marketing news and show you how to become a social media marketing manager to author posts and content that will help you begin boosting sales right away.
Invest in Paid Ads
The most direct form of sales-driven media marketing on social media platforms is paid ads which can reach a wide audience and maintain the visibility of your brand on users’ feeds. Reaching users organically has become harder as new social media algorithms can render the previously reliable social media marketing strategy useless. Of course, you need to think about your target demographic to determine which platform will promise the best return on your investment. If you’re selling to an older demographic, then marketing on a platform like TikTok might miss the mark! If you’re going to start with one platform, we’d recommend Facebook – it has a huge and diverse range of users, and the paid ads services are fantastically easy to operate.
Collaborate with Influencers
While your long-term goal should be the development of your company’s social media marketing brand, it’s never a bad idea to take advantage of influencers to help cross-promote your products. Influencers have a uniquely personal relationship with their followers, which makes their endorsements more impactful than the average marketing campaign.
Start by finding the influencers within your niche whose personal brand aligns with your business’s values and media marketing focus. You can then get in touch to see if they’d be willing to promote your products or post a review of your services in return for freebies or discount codes. Obviously, the biggest influencers don’t come cheap, but even those with smaller followings can be decisive in convincing new audiences to make a purchase and help make social media marketing for small businesses a success.
Convert Customers into Brand Ambassadors
We’ve discussed how influencers can lend a personal touch to your media marketing campaign, so why don’t you leverage that proactively by integrating your own satisfied customers into your social media marketing? Offer discounts and freebies in exchange for candid reviews to help generate organic conversations around your brand and boost your sales at the same time. You could also implement a referral scheme, where customers get rewards when they refer others to make a successful purchase.
Source Content from Audiences
User-generated content (UGC) refers to all social media activity organically generated by customers themselves. Most commonly, this will be a post or picture featuring your product. Don’t waste any time in liking and reposting these, as audiences will be attracted to the inherent social proof in UGC. This type of media marketing content is a great way to build brand awareness and generate an increase in sales.
Add Buy Buttons to Your Posts
You might not be aware, but the majority of the biggest social media platforms now let you optimize your posts with purchase options allowing customers to make transactions directly through their social media accounts. It’s hard to overestimate the importance of ease of use when it comes to encouraging customers to make a conversion, and the option to buy directly also narrows the window in which customers can change their minds about making a purchase.
Make Your Posting Activity Consistent
Nothing puts audiences off a brand than finding an account that’s obviously been neglected for some time. It makes your products look stale and will usually drive customers towards competitors who are putting more time and effort into making their accounts fresh and relevant. If you are serious about leveraging social media marketing to drive sales, you need to post new and engaging content on a consistent basis. Beyond the aesthetic value of having a busy and active social media account, most platforms’ algorithms require you to be posting regularly to maintain your brand’s visibility. Try and ensure that your content is attractive and engaging and audiences will respond positively to all the work you’re putting in.
Stay in Touch with Current Trends
In the past, seasonal giveaways and promotions around events like Christmas and Valentine’s Day would be the focus of the average marketing department. However, in the fast-paced social media marketing world, we need to dig a little deeper to stay on top of the times. As random trends pop up on social media, marketers can take advantage by making related posts that surf on the latest online “water cooler” phenomena.
Trends like, for example, the ice bucket challenge, offer an opportunity for marketers to make their content hip and engaging. You could also consider incorporating the latest trending memes into your social media marketing ideas to better engage with millennial and Gen Z demographics. It doesn’t matter if the trend falls out of fashion later since the vast majority of social media users will only look at your most recent posts.
Final Thoughts
A social media marketing strategy can be a powerful tool that will offer a great return on investment for your marketing spend. More traditional businesses might be hesitant to develop a presence on these platforms or be unsure how to leverage these resources for sales. However, there’s no better way to promote your goods to a huge range of audiences that would be difficult to reach otherwise through more conventional types of marketing. Has a social media marketing strategy already paid off for your business? Tell us how you made it work in the comments section below. Also, when it comes to sales, keep in mind the email marketing strategy can help you as much as the social media strategy.This strategy could have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign, and you can also use email marketing software tools like Constant Contact that will help you have a successful campaign.
