Marketing has always believed that the best marketing technique is getting the audience to talk about your brand or product, called the word of mouth publicity. Many businesses focus primarily on creating a customer-centric brand to cater to its audience’s tastes and preferences. But in the modern world, just having a product that customers like is not enough.
As per Statista, social media had 2.95 billion users in 2019, and the numbers are expected to reach around 3.43 billion by 2023. Digital channels are integral for businesses and individuals today, for it has a massive influence on customer behaviour. So, if you want to make the right impact on social media, you need to be visible and establish credibility to increase your social media presence.
And how do you do that? Here are five simple tips to help you increase your social media presence and get in front of the target audience quickly:
Create SMART Objectives and align them with your KPI
Having a goal or an objective for your social media presence is essential, as it shapes your communication, defines the outcome, and refrains you from communicating just for the sake. The marketing objectives can be:
- Awareness
- Engagement
- Driving traffic to your website
- Educating the audience about your products and/or services
- Direct revenue generation
Knowing a clear objective, helps you understand which are the KPIs essential to measure your results. Track and determine a marketing objective regularly to help have a focused digital marketing approach.
KYC (Knowing Your Customer) is key!
Your target audience or customer is essential, and any marketing campaign or social media strategy is determined by who they are and what they want. If you do not know your target group, your post or ads will be vague and may not have the right impact. So, get the details on your target audience through online surveys, polls, direct interaction and other ways to help you understand them.
A simple checklist for creating a target persona is as follows:
- Who is your target audience?
- Why do they need your products or services?
- Where are they? Which channel is the best to reach out to them?
- When are they most active or online?
- What are they doing? This should cover actions, behaviour, background, etc.
- How are you connecting with your audience?
Actively engage your audience
Once you know your target audience, the final question ‘How’ is essential to determine how you engage with your audience. Most businesses or individuals focus only on content creation, which is great for increasing visibility but doesn’t create engagement. To truly engage your audience, you need to create relevant content and start a conversation. Know when your audience is most active, what they are looking for and start engaging. Your brand should resonate their sentiments and empathize with the target customer to get the right reaction.
Additionally, reply to the comments on your posts, or respond to queries or questions that may be posted. Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter have several avenues where the end-user can reach out to the brand for quick help or issues. Resolving customer queries through social media creates a satisfied customer, and this positive feeling about you will help spread the word. A negative experience can similarly amplify and destroy your reputation.
Studies indicate that around 71% of consumers who’ve had positive interactions with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their connections.
Have a strategy for each social media platform
Choosing the right social media platforms for your outreach is one thing, but having the same strategy for each platform can be a huge problem. Each platform provides a different opportunity to reach out to the target audience, and you should be able to use this for your benefit.
Develop a customised strategy for each platform, while you have the same overall brand message and voice. Your industry plays an active role in your social media strategy as well. LinkedIn, for example, got 80% of social media B2B leads for enterprises, while 46% of traffic to company websites come from LinkedIn. This approach helps to reach out to the target audience on every platform and get the right output from it.
Promote your social media presence
Does your target audience know you’re online? Whether you are a small business, individual or an enterprise, your target audience needs to know you are just a click away. Promote your content through paid promotions for higher performance.
Some organic promotional ideas can be:
- Adding social media information to your email signature
- Add a follow button on your website
- Promote video on your website but host it on Youtube, so it gets organic reach too
- Make it part of all your marketing materials, like product brochures, whitepapers, etc.
There are several other opportunities on social media to help you increase your brand visibility. So start with a clear vision and keep amplifying as you progress! And most importantly, track your metrics regularly and use this feedback in your strategies.
Tags: Audience, Customer, Social Media