Table of Contents
Importance of social media for business
In 2021, about 40% of the population conducts activity in social networks in one way or another. For any company selling services and goods, no matter what level and scale it is, marketing in social networks are important. The media method of communication differs from television and radio, since social networks do not offer a one-size-fits-all solution, but work depending on the purpose.
There are a huge number of strategies and choosing the most successful requires a deep understanding of your target audience to increase the importance and have the greatest impact on communication.
Social media marketing will be successful when an organization sets clear goals, understands what its audience wants, produces relevant and engaging posts, and has chosen the right social media platforms that match its product or service.
They broadcast their availability on all channels and strive to create a campaign that integrates social networks into offline events.
Reasons to use Social media for business:
At the moment, social networks provide ample opportunities for promoting a product or service. And if initially social networks were used to communicate with friends or relatives who are far away, now a brand can do it: conduct a human dialogue with potential and current customers.
Engage your audience:
Engagement is a great way to build trust with customers and build contact points that can develop over time.
Build brand loyalty
Trust transforms into brand loyalty. Users get to know the brand even better through posts, ask questions, become partial to the product, and recommend it to their friends.
Integrate channels
Social media integrates well with other channels, this makes it possible to stimulate marketing campaigns in original ways and get quick feedback. They are also much cheaper, for example than contextual advertising.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a special approach to product promotion aimed at increasing consumer confidence. Not only the advantages of goods and services are emphasized, but the audience is convinced of the maximum benefit from the product.
The natural format of content marketing is text descriptions, video reviews, podcasts, and in general any way to communicate about the product with the most open-mindedness. The effect of content marketing is long-term because its task is not to sell a service or product right now, but to interest, increase the trust and loyalty of the audience.
In general, this approach builds people’s trust and confidence that they are dealing with professionals. Therefore, we pay attention to those suppliers of goods and services who demonstrate their expertise, willingness to help in choosing, direct, and give the best recommendations to inexperienced users.
Content marketing does not sell a product or service here and now – its effect is long-term. In the long run, it works to increase the trust and loyalty of the audience.
However, its results also need to be read and analyzed. Your brand becomes recognizable, significant among competitors and in the market in general. From an economic point of view, content marketing is often less expensive than traditional promotion methods.
For example, SEO and ad campaign fees are no longer necessary. At the same time, the effect of media can be comparable to traditional types of promotion. If the post is really interesting to the target audience, it will spread and get more links.
Benefits of content marketing
- Conducting sales with information or media that attracts an audience;
- Increasing brand awareness;
- Lower budget than when promoting by other advertising methods;
- Improving the position of sites in the search results;
- Increasing website traffic;
- Strengthening the authority of companies in the eyes of the public and competitors, the formation of expert status.
- Successful content marketing
- Setting a goal
It is impossible to measure the result if there was no goal at the beginning. Based on the goal, performance indicators are measured: the number of new customers, coverage, number of likes, and conversions to the site.
For example:
Increase the number of conversions to the site: it will receive additional traffic and increase SEO promotion;
Reduced cost per lead: due to a positive reputation, you can spend less money on advertising;
Learn the needs of the audience: you can understand what is interesting to readers, their needs, and “pains”.
Deep knowledge of the target audience will help to strengthen any promotion strategy.
Study target audience: The target audience is people who can become customers of the company. They have a problem or need that your product covers, so you need to target them with ads.
In order not to waste your budget, you need to analyze the target audience before launching an advertising campaign. This is a study in the course of which you need to find out who is really interested in your products and services and why.
More attention should be paid to information about which social network is a priority for the target audience. Each network has its own characteristics, respectively, and the promotion strategy will differ. You shouldn’t be sprayed on all social networks. Better to pick 2 and give them proper attention.
Study opponents: Having studied the promoted groups of opponents, you can understand the direction of the development of your own account.
With the help of competitor analysis on social networks, you can:
1) Detect other people’s mistakes and prevent their own mistakes
For example, you can see that a competitor does not respond in a timely manner under the comments in the products. Or maybe he is not telling the truth?
Cheats with contests, or badly designed posts on Facebook and does not post stories on Instagram at all. Or, when creating ad creatives, it does not take into account the pains of the target audience at all. You’ve probably already analyzed the target audience of your project?
2) Take the best and make it even cooler
If your competitor is great, this is even more interesting. This means that there is something to profit from in his profile, you can take both cool techniques and interesting topics for publications.
Competitive analysis helps to build a subscriber acquisition strategy based on someone else’s experience. To do this, you will need to study how transactions are made and page managers/admins work, what are the terms of delivery and payment. For example, you can dump prices or connect a more advanced chatbot to process orders.
Choosing content topics
After studying the target audience and competitors, it will already be clear what is interesting to potential customers. It is important to constantly experiment and analyze the reactions of readers in order to offer something relevant. You need to post information that is extremely interesting for readers.
You can often see how the brand feed begins to dazzle with posts only about promotions and discounts. This is perceived as spam. To keep the attention of the target audience, publications should be diverse and have a different focus.
Of course, not every business owner can be a good content writer. If you don’t have the skills to write blog articles, working with professional companies that specialize in type my essay services is the best possible alternative.
Professional content writers know how to make the content more valuable and attractive, and they will be able to pick an engaging topic.
Smart feed
For posts to be seen by as many users as possible, they should:
- Be original;
- With a large number of likes, reposts, and comments (posts with closed comments are ranked worse);
- Accompanied by a high-quality image or video.
Each network has its own characteristics. In Instagram, the visual appeal comes first. Facebook ranks recorded videos much better than text.
All of these features are critical to social media marketing. The material for each network should be different. Many people duplicate it from network to network. As a result, on one side, the post gets good coverage, while on the other, almost no one saw it.
What is a content marketing funnel?
A content marketing funnel is a system that helps a brand to attract leads. The funnel promotion takes the customer from the first acquaintance with the brand to the purchase.
Marketing experts identify 3 main stages of the funnel:
TOFU (top of the funnel) – attracts attention.
MOFU (middle of the funnel) – generates leads.
BOFU (bottom of the funnel) – Manages payments.
At each stage, the wishes and needs of the user differ. This means that your media should serve different purposes, and the results are measured in different values.
The key question you must answer as a marketer is what information will satisfy your customers’ needs at a particular stage in the funnel?
The main goal of a marketing strategy is to engage a specific audience, engage, and motivate them to make a purchase. Next, we will look at the key points of creating a funnel and defining its functions. As a result, you will be able to form effective marketing.
TOFU (top of the funnel) is the starting point of a prospect’s journey. Here, most of the audience is not ready to buy and, most likely, have not even heard of your company.
Here our goal is to attract the attention of customers, to offer the best answer to their request. And then gently and unobtrusively introduce the brand. More than ⅔ of marketers found that how-tos and how-tos best grab customer attention at the top of the funnel. With their help, a specific client problem is solved. You show your audience that you are an expert in the field.
It is also important to leave some understatement in order to awaken the client’s desire to learn more about the brand as they move down the funnel. Focus on adding value to your audience. Content marketing at the TOFU stage should be aimed at drawing attention to the site or page on the social network.
During the MOFU (middle of the funnel) stage, the number of people interacting with your content decreases. But they are much more likely to interact if you encourage them to do so. The goal here is to take a prospect from the first opinion on your brand to a deep understanding of how your solution will help solve their problem.
Since all customers have different motivations, you should offer a large selection of compelling posts and show different ways to use your product.
The BOFU (bottom of the funnel) stage is the bottom of the funnel. Content marketing at this stage should position your brand better than your competitors, increase credibility and facilitate purchasing decisions.
Media posts for BOFU should answer specific questions about a product or service. For example, how the product works, what skills are required to work with it.
Create content for each stage of the funnel based on your content strategy
The one-step approach has replaced full-text social marketing. The overwhelming majority of survey participants guide their potential customers through all stages of the funnel using the right media materials for this.
Create content for every stage of the funnel from brand acquaintance to purchasing decision.
This will help convert your audience into happy customers. If you work with freelance copywriters, take their choice seriously. Because ENL or ESL writers have different abilities in writing high-quality content.
Publish product reviews, success stories, and customer testimonials to drive purchases
More than half of marketers surveyed believe that product reviews perform best at the bottom of the marketing funnel. Other types of content for BOFU were customer testimonials, cited by 50% of respondents. Success stories are chosen by 43% of marketers.
It is at the bottom of the funnel that customer-generated content helps attract even more customers. What can you trust more than the reviews and experiences of customers like you?
The bottom line
Content marketing sets itself the task of creating and distributing such material through priority channels that would induce the consumer to take the target action, involve him in the conversion scenario and form a relationship with him in the long term. Today content marketing in social networks is almost a key factor in brand development.
That is why you should take a closer look at how social media can help you engage even more customers.
