With over 3.6 billion people active on social media platforms, it creates a huge opportunity for businesses to market their products and services. In the 21st century if any of the ventures are not into Social Media Marketing then they are losing extensive opportunities to grow and flourish.
Social media marketing can be defined as online marketing that utilizes platforms like:
- Facebook,
- Instagram,
- Twitter,
- TikTok,
- Youtube,
- Pinterest, etc.
Comparison between the old way of advertisement vs. online advertisement:
- Traditional Marketing is an expensive mode of advertisement in comparison to Social Media Marketing as it cannot be canceled amid a campaign.
- In Traditional Marketing, the effectiveness of any campaign couldn’t be determined, whereas, in Social Media Marketing, there are various analytics tools to track the performance of a campaign.
- Traditional Marketing does not always advertise the content to the targeted audience, whereas in Social Media Marketing, it’s easy to highly target the audience according to their age, demography, gender, likes, dislikes, behavior, interest, etc.
Platforms for traditional marketing:
- Print Ads
- Billboards
- Radio
- Direct mail
- Direct sales
- Television, etc.
Platforms for Social Media Marketing:
- Search engines
- Websites
- Social media platforms
- Emails, etc.
Features Of Social Media Marketing:
- Extensive Global Reach:
There are 3.2 billion users on social media platforms globally. 1 in 3 people is active on one or other social media platforms. Out of 3.2 billion users, 2.6 billion people are active on Facebook, 2.1 billion people are on Youtube, 1 billion users are on Instagram, 700 million users are on Linkedin. These insights depict the great opportunities for any business to market its products or services.
- Spot the right audience:
Social Media Channels have a huge amount of data of their users, which they provide to the marketers to help them to target the desired audience. The stats like age, location, gender, demography, etc. can be acquired through social media platforms. In addition to basic targeting, marketers can also target those people who have interacted before with their business page via Custom Audience.
- Data Measurement and Optimization:
Social media platforms can track data like,
- How many people liked the post?
- How many people watched the video?
- How many people commented, shared the post?
- How many people clicked on the link provided?
These data can be acquired by installing Pixel on social media channels. This helps in tracking the journey of the audience visiting the website, which in turn benefits the marketers to track the conversions and optimize the budget to increase the ROI.
The algorithm also helps business personnel to optimize the ad spend to achieve their objective at the lowest possible price.
- Grow Organically:
It is possible to run ads on social media platforms organically, but it will cover a very limited audience. It is also very competitive to run campaigns without paying any penny to social media platforms. For the success of organic ads, it needs to be liked, shared by a huge audience. Then only it will reach more and more people. Therefore it is recommended to spend a minimum amount of money to see whether the campaign is giving desired results or not.
- Engage With Audience:
Social Media Channels provide the platform to communicate with the audience one to one. Consumers can also frequently ask queries, review the products or services.
Brief description of social media marketing:
- Facebook Marketing:
With over 2.63 billion users on Facebook, it provides one of the largest platforms for online marketing via
- Facebook page
- Facebook group
- Facebook ads
- Facebook marketplace.
Types of Facebook ads:
- Image ads: it is done for driving traffic and for a call to action.
- Video ads: it is used for branding, to show the features of the products, to show the testimonials, etc.
- Carousel ads: it can be used for E-commerce sites to show their products from different angles.
- Collection ads: this is used for advertising different products for an E-commerce website.
- Instagram marketing:
With over 1 billion active users on Instagram, it is considered as one of the best platforms to target the audience between the age group of 18 to 35 years of age. Its users are the most engaged users among all other platforms.
Instagram marketing can be done via
- Images and videos
- Stories and there is also an option to highlight them
- Reels, currently they are trending among all forms of posts.
Steps:
- Optimize the Instagram profile
- Provide the bio link
- Create a strategy for content
- Contact social media influencers for branding
- Use hashtag strategy.
- Twitter Marketing:
With over 700 million users on Twitter, it provides a platform for B2B marketing. It is also one of the best platforms to communicate with government officials. If the citizens want to make any complaint to any of the ministries, it can be done via Twitter.
Steps:
- Set up a Twitter account
- Decide the strategy for creating content
- Use hashtag strategy
- Schedule the time for posting the content
- Engage with the audience.
- TikTok Marketing:
With over 1 billion active users on TikTok, this platform is suitable to target Gen Z. On this platform, users upload short videos ranging from 15 seconds to 60 seconds.
Steps:
- Create a brand’s channel and upload videos relevant to the business.
- Hire influencers to promote the brand to a larger audience.
- Paid advertising can also be used for marketing on TikTok.
- Youtube Marketing:
With over 2.1 billion users on Youtube, it is one of the most engaging and knowledge-driven platforms. It can be used both for B2B and B2C marketing, basically consisting of video content.
Steps:
- Create Youtube Channel, optimize it.
- Target the right audience.
- There should be consistency in scheduling the content.
- Content should be engaging, headlines should be eye-catchy.
- Target the accurate keywords.
These are some of the tips to grow your business. One of the best Digital Marketing agencies in Indore helps various firms to grow their businesses in this new era of digital marketing.