Over the last few years, social media marketing (SMM) has become an integral part of Internet marketing, and its share is only increasing. Along with the growing audience of such resources, their opportunities for promotion and advertising are developing, the number of experienced SMM marketers are growing, and who have in their portfolio cases of successful advertising campaigns on social media.
Advantages and disadvantages of SMM
Social media marketing
Using social media promotion can bring different results.
They depend, first of all, on whether SMM promotion is appropriate for a given
product or service, as well as how well the opportunities and features of
social networks are used. SMM has its advantages and disadvantages that need to
be known and taken into account when planning and implementing an advertising
campaign.
- Benefits. Among the attractive aspects of marketing on social networks are the following:
- Higher trust in information that does not look like ordinary advertising;
- The ability to reach target audiences from different countries and regions, increasing coverage without reducing conversions;
- Segmentation of the target audience, if necessary, according to various criteria, which gives the highest quality of information delivery;
- The cost of the advertising campaign is much lower than the television advertising with the same or greater coverage of CA;
- Prompt feedback allows you to flexibly change the conduct of the advertising campaign depending on the reaction of the target audience;
- Quick response speeds up the collection and processing of information received during the promotion.
- Disadvantages. However, there are some limitations and features of marketing in social networks, which should be taken into account for an objective assessment of the prospects for promotion:
- The desired result is achieved in a relatively long time, because there is no direct advertising link, and promotion is based on social connections;
- Such promotion to achieve a stable and long-term result requires constant activity in the placement of materials to attract more users;
- Flexibility and high complexity of the advertising campaign complicates the preliminary calculation of the budget;
- The achievement of the desired result cannot be guaranteed;
- Search in social networks on popularity while concedes to use of search engines;
- The success of marketing in social networks strongly depends on the reputation, which is long and hard to earn, but can be destroyed by one failed publication;
- For users who spend a lot of time on the social network it becomes easier to distinguish advertising information from the usual;
- Segments such as B2B, industrial goods or services are poorly promoted by SMM.
- As you can see, social media promotion is very different from traditional internet marketing. It requires the use of special tools and is highly dependent on the social network and target audience.
The most popular social networks in Pakistan
Among the popular social resources used, Facebook,
Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube are mostly used for promotion.
The choice of a social network for an advertising campaign depends on the target audience and its reach. Effective promotion usually involves the use of several resources, as they differ in the methods used to convey information and work differently, even for one target audience.
Social Media Marketing Certification Courses
The choice of tools and methods used for SMM promotion depends on the choice of model for building an advertising campaign, the social networks used and the tasks facing the marketer. If we talk about promotion models, we use three - work directly in social networks (SMM), optimization of available resources for effective integration with social networks (SMO), targeted advertising. The huge number of available tools and approaches in social marketing can be divided into several main groups: Content management is a major area of effort. The quality and relevance of the content to the objectives of the advertising campaign and the needs of the target audience determine the success of other tools and the reality of achieving the desired result;
Community management tools are just as important as they
help build strong connections and engage audiences. Quick response to feedback
from users, the ability to work with questions and negativity, stimulating
discussion - these are the actions that are necessary for effective management
of communities on social networks;
Collaboration with well-known bloggers (opinion leaders)
helps to increase the level of trust in the brand and increase the reach of the
target audience;
Advertising in various thematic groups or pages in the form
of paid publications helps to accelerate the process of expanding audience
reach. For this purpose, manual search or special exchanges are used, where you
can choose the theme of the group;
Games on social networks are very popular and can be
successfully used for advertising and promotion;
Promotional offers or offers can be placed in the feed,
offering promotions and discounts. When activating such an offer, the user's
friends receive a message that helps to inform the maximum number of users
faster;
Widgets on sites do a good job of attracting new users to
groups and publics using traffic from search engines.
the use of an already promoted resource to promote a new one
is called circular promotion. It can be a group or a public in the same or even
in another social network;
competitions under the condition of transparency and
interesting organization can seriously increase the audience of the page and increase
the involvement and loyalty of users to the brand;
joint cross-promotion can be used for brands that have the
same target audience but are not competitors. In this case, the cost of
advertising is reduced, and users receive a comprehensive offer;
hashtags are actively used in many social networks. With the help of a correctly selected hashtag already promoted, you can attract new
users, as well as influence the brand image on the social network;
live broadcasts are becoming increasingly popular and help
to engage the target audience more;
site snippet optimization is performed to optimally display
links to your resource in social services. The snippet may contain images,
advertising and other information that may be attractive;
Targeted advertising is becoming more sophisticated every
year, and allows users to send messages based on the data placed in their
profile and on the pages.
SMM promotion tools, even aimed at achieving a single goal,
actually help to solve a number of tasks. These include increasing brand
awareness and customer loyalty, distinguishing a company or brand, rebuilding
from competitors, and, as a result, increasing sales of products or services.
What mistakes are best avoided when using social networks?
social media marketing
Even the best tool does not guarantee the absence of errors. Especially when it comes to such a complex and sometimes unpredictable type of marketing activity as SMM. Knowing the most common mistakes of marketing on social networks, you can avoid failures in advertising campaigns and spend more budget on promotion.
Don't expect a quick result
One of the most common mistakes is to expect a quick return in the form of sales growth after the start of a campaign to promote on social networks. Unlike contextual, banner and other types of advertising, SMM affects the sale of goods and services indirectly. You will have to wait a while before you see the result. This term can be very different for each social network and market segment.
Expecting a quick result can lead to frustration on social media and the collapse of the campaign prematurely. To avoid this error, it is necessary to clearly define the criteria by which the success of the promotion will be evaluated. It should be understood that it is possible to adjust the terms in any direction.
Do not marry users and "likes"
The natural desire of the owner of the page or group is a large number of participants and their active involvement. But it often happens that in the pursuit of quantity, quality is lost - most of the participants are bought fake accounts, which will not bring any benefit, but can negatively affect the brand's reputation on the social network. It is necessary to understand the actual size of the target audience depending on the scope of the company. It is unlikely that a small local restaurant needs an audience of many thousands, most of whom will never visit this city.
But even a large CA should not rush to increase the number of likes and subscribers in any way. As a result, it will only give a short-term increase in the rating, but will not help build relationships with customers and increase their loyalty.
Say no to poor quality content
The main feature of quality content on social networks - it is interesting to users, they share it with friends. In many cases, you can see uninteresting content on the pages of companies and brands, texts written in dry language, copied from press releases. It is not surprising that there are problems with the promotion of such pages - users are not interested in reading dry texts written in "inanimate" language. The same effect (or rather, its absence) brings the placement of content that is not related to the subject of the group, the activities of the brand and the interests of the target audience.
Careful study of the target audience, competent selection of materials, placement of not only unique but also interesting information that is of interest to users will help to avoid this mistake.
React quickly
Timely response to comments, questions, and problematic situations is very important for establishing connections and increasing loyalty. The sooner the response to the appeal, the better. It is not uncommon for many pages to have a number of questions and requests from users to which there is no visible response. This is unacceptable because it undermines trust and loyalty to the company as a whole.
Study statistics
Every post on a social network is designed for a certain reaction of the audience because it is an advertisement of our brand. And it is necessary to apply various methods of collecting statistics and its analysis. Otherwise, it happens that advertising is spent, SMM specialists work, but no one knows which tools, channels and publications are effective and which are not. Modern statistics collection tools allow for in-depth analysis to increase the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. Their constant use allows you to have an objective picture of the promotion process.
The balance between sales and interesting content
Here we will talk about two mistakes, which are two extremes - it is excessive enthusiasm for direct advertising with calls to "buy" and, conversely, the emphasis on entertainment content, which does not affect the improvement of sales of goods and services. The reason in both cases is often that the brand or company has no idea what may be interesting to users of social networks. As a result, she either does what she is used to - advertises her products, or starts entertaining them. In the first case, the target audience quickly loses interest in the page, because everyone has long developed immunity to direct advertising, or enjoys consuming entertainment content that has nothing to do with the company's product.
A competent approach to creating content and planning its placement on social networks is a balance between entertaining and interesting information and materials that have an advertising character. Only in this case, everyone gets what they expect from the use of the social network - visitors to communication and social connections, the brand - to increase loyalty and sales.
Examples of successful SMM campaigns
Proper use of promotion tools on social media often brings
impressive results that become known far beyond the industry. The most
successful become models and a source of experience for other marketers, they
are talked about on the Internet.
Kate Hudson has run a successful Facebook campaign for her sportswear brand Fabletics. Attracting users was carried out through advertising on a social network with a call to buy their first sports equipment at a very low price - only $ 25. To do this, you had to subscribe to the brand page and pass a simple test that helped determine your clothing size. At the same time, the meter pushed visitors to make a quick purchase. More than 200,000 likes were collected during the campaign, and the company's profit is estimated at $ 650 million.
The international corporation IKEA pays a lot of attention to promotion on social networks, and in 2016 stood out with another campaign. Buyers were offered a series of products, the names of which were taken from the search queries of people who were looking for solutions to difficult life situations. Naturally, such an unusual campaign attracted a lot of attention from social network users and received a lot of likes.
Instagram in many countries has already become a promising platform for promotion, as evidenced by a large number of successful cases in the field of style and fashion. For example, the well-known perfume brand Chanel used branded hashtags to promote a new series of its products. The company has invited several well-known bloggers to its flower and production fields so that they can show the creation of new fragrances from within. Using special hashtags in their stories, they increased the number of users of the brand's social network page by 40,000 people.
The experience of the Equinox fitness club network can be a great example for similar companies around the world. The marketing activity of the brand is to promote a healthy lifestyle on social networks. The company's publications have a network logo but are not perceived as advertising, which increases user loyalty and helps increase their number. Subscribers are happy to share information with other members of social networks, involved in brand promotion.