Social media platforms have evolved from rudimentary networking tools to full-stack digital marketing channels for any business. Whether your marketing to business professionals in the accounting industry or vegan millennials in San Francisco, you can likely carve out an audience via advanced user targeting. Widely used platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have come a long way since their inception, with budding platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok making an impact with younger crowds. LinkedIn & Pinterest have their appeal with different niches, the former focusing on the business space. In contrast, the latter offers merchants a hybrid search engine/social media platform ripe with opportunities.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is the process of engaging users on various platforms to promote brands, products, and services. The manifestation of social media marketing as a powerful digital channel for revenue generation has forced businesses to abandon obsolescent tactics such as buying likes and adopt conversion-focused strategies. Utilizing social media networks to execute marketing campaigns and promote your brand to a highly attentive audience provides far more potential than traditional advertising campaigns. For example, consider placing a print advertisement in a magazine, as antiquated as that may seem, or developing a storyboard for a 30-second TV spot. While you may be able to reach a specific segment of potential customers with traditional advertising strategies, exorbitant media buys and endless resources are required. Creative departments, copywriters, and media buyers make their presence felt from beginning to end, requiring you to wade through an endless stream of communications and meetings to bring the marketing strategy to life. I’m not discounting the effectiveness of traditional advertising; however, relying solely on TV & print to reach targeted audiences is merely the reality of the past. On the other hand, social media marketing allows you to deliver content in a variety of rich formats to targeted audiences in a manner of minutes. The ability to deploy effective campaigns quickly has ushered in a new marketing era requiring creative flair and analytical dexterity.
Evolution of Social Media Marketing
When yours truly started to dabble in the art of social media marketing, venerable powerhouses such as Gary Vaynerchuk hammered the “Jab Jab Jab Right Hook” methodology. Effective marketing on social media platforms required delivering high-value content to earn the undying attention of your niche audience. However, the proliferation of technology over the last ten years has resulted in a world population that immerses itself in all digital aspects, making it tougher to capture the undivided attention of target audiences.
As users have become technologically inclined, social media platforms have evolved to provide businesses with a multitude of tools to manage an assortment of strategies effectively. Rich advertising formats, powerful listening tools, and intelligent analytical systems have converted social media marketing from a content-based tactic to an approach drawing upon a myriad of talents. Long gone are the days where simply Tweeting paragraphs of content will convert users into potential customers. Adept social strategists have forged new paths by carrying out conversion-focused campaigns deeply rooted in a web of analytics to achieve KPIs.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Catapulting your brand to new heights in a cluttered digital era is of the utmost importance to maintain relevance and brand recognition. Additionally, siphoning traffic away from competitors with a dazzling assortment of visual media will help you retain top of mind awareness with your niche audience. Maintaining an entertaining presence on core social media platforms gives your brand a platform from which it can educate, inspire, and eventually convert users into long-term customers. Even though most social feeds feature an unrelenting array of advertisements in rich formats, digital users tend to become enamoured with viral trends and memes, allowing your brand to reinforce its social media clout by being at the forefront of new developments.
On the conversion-focused realm of social media marketing, the ability to pinpoint targeting options to precisely the audience you want to reach is unparalleled in the digital age. Whether it’s targeting lookalike users of your customers on Facebook or creating hyper-focused campaigns on LinkedIn targeting accounting professionals in the retail industry, The smorgasbord of advertising capabilities at one’s disposal would make even the most stoic media buyer animated.