Hitching onto the right social media platform is important for a varied number of reasons, and the obvious one is that it enables you to expand your footprint. If your choice is right, the right people will be within an arm’s length away, people who will be interested in your business. So how do you arrive at which social media platform is best for marketing your business?
Social media platforms have become highly interactive and are nothing like to linear structure of past models of advertisement. Each social media platform is highly focused in its reach and scope. So how do you identify which social media platform is best for marketing if you are preoccupied with running your business?
The big guns are the obvious stopping points if you want to pin down which social media platform is best for marketing your service or product. And top of the list is the big 6: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
Know Which Social Media Platform Is Best For Marketing By Diligently Following A Few Simple Steps
You can know which social media platform is the best for your audience by answering a few questions that will help decide easily. You need to know the answer to a few basic questions such as who is your typical customer and what is their average age.
You also have to know the break-up of the gender and get other important information such as their education and income. Finally, you need to know of their interests outside your service or product.
Then other pertinent questions could be specific to your product or service and help you build a profile of your target customer.
No Single Social Media Platform Can Give You A Total Coverage
A single social media platform can never be the final stop for all your marketing needs. For instance, we cannot claim with certainty that Facebook will give you complete coverage of your potential customers.
Facebook is extremely effective in the brand promotion of certain types, but it is not effective for all products. Neither can anyone claim that it can reach out to all customers?
As a result, defining your goal becomes important to know which social media platform is best for marketing your service or product.
Defining Goals For Your Target Audience
Once the target audience has been identified, you would need to define goals for it. While getting customers to test your product would be your primary aim as a businessman, other goals drive your choice of social media platforms.
Again it is not only selling services and products that drive all business interaction with social media. Many companies use social media for a purpose other than selling and marketing.
Social media is used by some entities to drive brand recognition and develop a friendly image with potential and present customers.
Netflix, for instance, uses Twitter to address issues relating to customer service. This frees up the pressure on their phone lines and also allows them to promote their brand through inputs from satisfied customers.
Arriving at which social media is best for social media marketing suited to your needs can be achieved through brainstorming. This helps you arrive at the platform that is best suited to the needs of your company.
The platform you choose should jell with the nature of the brand. For example, if the millennial woman is your target, Instagram is the obvious choice. Women tend to go more with Instagram and their average age is below 25.
On the other hand, a B2B brand will be more successful by associating its brand with LinkedIn. This platform is more appealing for professionals looking to network on a professional level and brands that are targeting professionals.
So it becomes obvious that you need to know if you are a B2B or a B2C company. Next, you need to decide the target market of your ideal customer. And finally, you have to decide on the goal of your social media marketing. Do you need it to sell your product, or connect, or build awareness for your brand?
The Yardstick To Measure Social Media Marketing Success
Once you hitch your wagon to a social medial platform, measuring our success is your next logical step. Fortunately, multiple tools give you how successful your social media campaign has been in promoting and selling your products.
You can combine social media with mail marketing and ESP such as Campaign Monitor allows you to reach out to your target audience.
A monitor allows you to track how many people have shared your social media platform. You also get to know how many people are pushing through your email campaign.
Some people question the logic behind the money and other resources spent in generating a social media marketing campaign. They contend that an email campaign is more effective.
But the most effective blend is to integrate your direct email marketing campaign with marketing on social media platforms.
It helps you to develop and reinforce your brand and its message. A vital input from social media is that you can narrow down the profile of an ideal customer, their specific needs, and wants. Your rankings on search engines also improve.
Social media helps you interact instantly and intensely with your client base. This advantage of immediacy helps you to address issues faster, which not just saves the customer money, but more importantly leaves him satisfied.
Facebook still leads with 2.7 billion. That is close to the combined population of China and India, around 36% of the planet’s population. The app is used mainly to keep in touch with old contacts and make some new ones. It is an excellent way to reach the maximum number of our customer base, but the numbers have its limitation because of the size and amorphous nature.
Twitter has a smaller base but is much more direct and the use of hashtags gives focus to a phrase or a word.
Pinterest has that scrapbook feel as it allows to pin videos or photos. This platform is a great way to connect with women, the major user of this social media.
YouTube has a base of 2.3 billion subscribers, but its reach is far wider and has become one of the biggest go-to platforms for almost any subject. It is an ideal platform for support for the service industry.
Instagram has emerged as one of the fastest-growing platforms. It relies more on photos and videos for interaction. This social media platform is ideal for businesses like food, art, beauty, and retail. The demographic is young and influential.
