5 Tips for Running a Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign

Launching a successful social media marketing campaign takes research and strategic planning. The campaign can help you connect with new followers, build meaningful relationships with the existing followers, and drive long-term sales.

Connecting with your audience doesn’t mean only focusing on the quantity of followers or likes, but rather meeting measurable goals, which can range from branding to driving traffic to your website. In order to do that, you just need to follow a few steps to run a successful social media marketing campaign.

Define Your Goal

Before launching your social media campaign, you must decide what your primary and secondary goals are. In marketing, there are many types of goals and not all of them are related to earning new leads or sales for that matter.

A goal can be any action you wish for an individual to take. The goal of the campaign should be (SMART):

1. Specific: Your goal should reflect exactly what you wish to accomplish. Using exact quantities if possible. Ask yourself the 5 Ws — What, Why, Who, Where and When.
2. Measurable: Setting a goal that is measurable means if anyone were to look at the data after the campaign, they would be able to see clearly if the goal was met. This means that the goal needs to include numeric or descriptive measures that can easily be measured, such as percentages. This makes it easier to evaluate your progress and stay on track.
3. Attainable: Choose a goal that can actually be achieved. It’s important to stretch your abilities, but you should still be able to accomplish your goal.
4. Relevant: Ask yourself, does the goal seem worthwhile or is it inline with your other business goals?
5. Timely: Set a specific time by which the goal should be achieved. That way you’ll have something to focus on and work toward.  

Whether it’s lead generation, direct sales, or increased brand awareness, defining your goals will help you measure the success of your efforts.

Goals are simply what you wish to accomplish with your business, and your strategy is how you plan to accomplish them. Don’t waste hours trying to make your goals perfect. You can always review and adjust your approach down the road.

The most important thing to do is to find your why. Why do you do what you do? What problems do you solve? What opportunities do you create? Whatever it is, it should relate to your mission and vision as a business.

For example, consumers today are looking for companies that are giving back. Given that close to 5% of Americans think that the marketing industry doesn’t act with integrity, business owners need to find their why and attach it to their marketing strategy. When you attach your purpose to your business, you begin to tell a story that moves your customers. Only you can decide why you do what you do.

Select Your Audience

When you’re running a campaign, who exactly are you trying to target? it’s important to recognize who’s in your target market — the broad group of people who are potential customers for your product or service.

More importantly, you need to select who your target audience will be for this specific campaign. Knowing the exact demographics and psychographics of your target audience will help you shape the right kind of content and messaging for your campaign.

Create Your Strategy

Now that you’ve defined your goals, how do you plan on executing them? Understanding which social media platforms are best for your business is crucial. If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) organization, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are best. If you’re a business-to-consumer (B2C) company, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are better. Find out which social media platforms suit your brand image. You’ll want to make sure you stay consistent with your branding across all platforms.

Post Trending Content

Find creative ways to craft your content around your goals in a way your audience will find appealing. Repurposing content by using different media forms is a great way to promote one product or service in a way that won’t seem repetitive.

There should be a balance of promotional and non-promotional content. If your followers are only getting content where they feel they’re being sold to all the time, chances are they’re going to unfollow you. Use the 20/80 rule; 20% promotional and 80% non-promotional content. Adding content from external sources will help position you as an expert in your industry.

Go Live!

Use the live stream feature on Instagram and Facebook to increase engagement. It’s the first thing your followers see when they log into the accounts. By taking advantage of this feature, you’ll be able to increase engagement, answer any questions, take polls and best of all, you can save it to your highlights so your followers can come back at a later time and watch it.

Use Specific Hashtags

Hashtags are an effective way to increase engagement on your posts. Using a branded hashtag not only creates a buzz with each post, but you can also track results of your campaign. Branded hashtags shouldn’t replace more commonly used hashtags. Instead, both should be used together.

Engage with Your Audience

Many consumers reach out to companies via social media for customer support. Close to 50% of consumers expect a response within one hour! Make sure you monitor your social media accounts daily to respond to your followers. Setting up notifications will help you stay on top of your alerts.

Research Your Competitors

Researching your competition is one of the best strategies for growing your business. You can see what’s working for your competition and use that insight to steer your own campaigns in the right direction.

What type of content are they creating and which type yields the best results? By no means does that imply copying what they’re doing. Get creative and see what methods work best for them and then put your own twist on it!

Why Social Media Ads are Valuable

Many small businesses are well connected to their most loyal customers on social networks, but if one of your goals is to connect with new audience members, you may want to enhance your reach by running social media ads.

Ad campaigns can drive more likes, followers and can even send them directly to your company’s website. Consumers tend to take well to these type of ads because of how seamless the integration is in their social feeds.

When it comes to your marketing budget, social media advertising should be apart of the mix. According to Social Media Today, social media ads get the highest engagement while costing less than a more traditional marketing strategies.  

Track Your Performance

Engagement on your posts are critical. It’s the most accurate way to track your performance. And social networks, like Facebook, reward posts that have the most comments or shares. Tracking your insights or analytics can teach your what works and what doesn’t.

Abandon any “set it and forget it” systems. It’s best to actively manage your campaign. In the beginning of the campaign, you may notice the most engagement, but it’s best to follow up a few weeks after to get a more accurate representation of how the campaign is performing.

After completing your analysis, determine which content performed best. You’ll know what to repeat to increase your results for future campaigns.

Conclusion

Remember to have fun with your campaign! You can use this opportunity to connect with your customers and build deeper relationships. Social media marketing campaigns are a great way for small businesses to promote their products and services with significant reach.

So what are you waiting for? Get started creating engaging content for your followers that impacts your sales and brand awareness!

Are you planning a social media marketing campaign for your business? Maybe you’ve tried one in the past and had unexpected success? Or failure? Let us know in the comments! We’d love to hear about your experience.