Social media marketing has taken over other forms of marketing strategy. Although other marketing campaigns are effective, such as email marketing, content marketing, and SEO, Social Media campaigns are highly effective.
With 3.80 billion social media users in January 2020, there is no doubt online marketing managers are frequently pushing to include social media into their campaigns.
But social media marketing is not a new thing. It has been around for years, and there are plenty of businesses utilizing this form of campaign. So, the question now, how can you compete with other businesses online? How is it possible to gain attention, engagement, and get sales?
Don’t worry. We have put together steps you can follow to compete with other businesses online or on social media.
How to Outshine Your Competition in Social Media
Evaluate Your Company’s Social Media Performance
Before you can create a strategy, you need to understand how your business performed in social media. Gather data from last year and probably earlier this year.
Check each of your social channels, how they gained leads, traffic, followers, conversions, and more. Also, check your previous goals if it has aligned with the results or data you have collected. The ultimate goal of most businesses is to convert leads, followers, and engagement into paying customers.
Auditing your social media analytics or performance includes plenty of positive reasons.
- It helps businesses understand who and what their audience wants.
- It aids online marketing managers to focus on social media platforms that are gaining more engagement or leads.
- Marketing professionals will have an idea of which content to create. They’ll have an idea if a brand is performing well when using images, blog posts, or videos for content.
- Get to understand the competition.
- Assist marketing managers in creating better strategies.
Now you know the benefits of auditing your social media accounts, you have a clear idea of what works and what failed in your previous campaigns or plans. Use this information to create effective strategies for your new social media marketing campaign for 2021.
Plot Attainable Goals
If you are starting with social media, the first step is to set your goals. However, if you have been using them in the past years, you need to utilize your social media accounts’ analytics or performance when plotting your marketing plan.
Goals or setting plans are crucial to guide businesses as they go along creating content. If you don’t set goals for your business, it’s just aimless. You’ll lose track of what you are doing, and you’ll not have a clear idea of what you need.
When setting goals, make sure it aligns with your business’s wider goals. Some possible goals to set:
- Building brand awareness
- Convert leads to sales/ increase sales
- Generate more leads
- Drive more traffic to the website
- Create a loyal fan base
- Get more ROI
If you want to simplify goal settings for your brand, you can follow the S.M.A.R.T criteria to determine your goals and see if they would work for your business.
- S = Specific
- M = Measurable
- A = Achievable
- R = Relevant
- T = Time-bound
Use the S.M.A.R.T criteria to break down each goal you have set.
You can share goals or plans with your team by using productivity tools. Using productivity software helps teams collaborate on projects without using emails and get real-time changes when needed.
Get to Know Your Audience
Learning about your audience helps create content directed to their interest. With the data you have collected from your previous posts or campaigns, you can get to know your most interactive age group, gender, demographics, and more.
The data you have collected can be used to create personalized campaigns even without creating individual content for each audience.
After getting to know your audience, it’s time to create an audience persona.
What is an audience persona?
An audience persona is a profile created from the target audience. It is based on the information gathered with an in-depth understanding. It’s a group of individuals with the same interest, behavioral characteristics, lifestyle, and so on.
You can answer these questions to build your audience’s persona:
- What’s the individual’s background?
- What are their interests?
- What are their goals?
- What are their pain points?
- Who influence’s their final decision?
- What is the source of information when making decisions?
Answering these questions will give you and your team an idea of what your audiences can be. For example, you have gathered from your metrics that your audiences are ages 35-40 and female. Most of them are parents, and their decisions are based on the interest of their child or children. With those simple data or knowledge about your traffic, you can now build a profile and marketing content that will sell to them.
Get to Know Your Competition
How can you outshine and give the best services to your audience without getting to know your competitors?
Competitor analysis is a step used to identify what your competitors are doing. You can get to know what content or campaign they use, what keywords they are after, what is trending in your industry, and more.
To find out what your competitors are doing on social media, you can use tools such as SEMrush, Quick Search, and SpyFu.
Understanding what your competitors do will help you create content strategy better. Hence, you can gain more customers or reach the goals you have set in the beginning.
Create Compelling Content
After conducting research and setting goals, it’s about time to create marketing content that will sell.
The campaigns or strategies you build should be based on your goal, audience persona, and competitors.
There are multiple forms of content you can use, but it is best to utilize what your audiences interact with the most. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, know which platform is working for your brand and focus on creating that content.
Samples of content for social media:
- Blog post and articles
- Images
- Videos
- Live stream videos
- Infographics
- User-generated content
- Contest
- Collaboration with influencers
- Link to external content
According to Sprout Social, 68% prefer images, 50% videos, and 30% text-based posts.
What platform to use?
Choose which platform works best for your brand. There are various social media platforms that marketing professionals utilize.
According to last year’s report of Statista, 94% of marketers use Facebook to promote a business or brand. However, it is best to know what works for your brand. Some businesses thrive on Instagram, while others get more sales on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Besides choosing your platform and creating content, part of your marketing strategy to outshine your competitors is to determine when to post your content.
If you plan to start a social media page for your business, research the best time you can post. But, if you have previous data, use them to help you promote your content online.
Work on Your Customer Service or Audience Interaction
Even though you have the best content posted on your social media but lack customer service, you can lose a follower. 49% of consumers unfollow a brand on social media due to poor customer service. Therefore, if you want to gain more followers and retain them, show that you care for your customers’ concerns.
Build excellent customer service by answering the comments and queries of your followers. For negative feedback, attend to them professionally to solve the issue. Taking care of your customers and creating quality content are two of the most crucial factors to stay ahead of the game.
Conclusion
For a successful social media campaign, it is valuable to conduct thorough research. The gathered information can be used for making important decisions when planning a strategy for your social media marketing.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Vanessa Venugopal is a passionate content writer. With four years of experience, she mastered the art of writing in various styles and topics. She is currently writing for Softvire Australia – the leading software eCommerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand.
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