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Social marketing (SMM) is one of the ways to increase the potential customer (Lead). In recent years, the use of social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Telegram has grown significantly so that by introducing your business on these platforms, you are exposing your brand. You will see millions of users, which in turn will increase the actual number of buyers of your products and services.

Today on the Ded9 website we are going to explore this almost emerging concept of marketing and provide you with the essential tips for doing so. So if you want to promote your business on popular social networks, this article will undoubtedly be useful and practical for you.

How does social marketing work?

Social marketing is defined in three main stages, each of which has separate functions and benefits.

Politics: Social marketing will help people understand the politics of life. It also makes the goals of politics in society real and achievable.

Strategy: Social marketing allows people to use their resources cost-effectively and use ways to use those resources that work best over time.

Implementation and delivery: Social marketing allows people to develop products, services, and communications tailored to the needs of the community.

Why is it important to use social marketing?

Research shows that 97% of small businesses use social networks to attract more audiences, but 85% of business owners do not know which social network is more useful for them! In addition, 63% of users who shop online prefer brands that have a stronger presence on social media.

Statistics show the great importance of social marketing in business, but most business owners do not have a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of social networks and their users; Users who are there as brand ambassadors. But where is your business on social media?

Undoubtedly, social networks make the business more popular. So that business owners show the brand activity to the users and follow their interaction with them in this way.

If you do not work on social networks, you will lose more audience over time, but if you use principled social marketing strategies, it will actually increase the engagement of the audience and eventually increase them over time. You will become real buyers. But remember that having virtual pages on social networks will not be of any value without continuous and professional activity. In the following, we will introduce the benefits of using social marketing and explain the step-by-step guide to its implementation.

Branding

Business personality is displayed on social media and is one of the best ways to communicate with your audience. Social media is the best opportunity to expand the content of your business, through which your brand reputation will be spread everywhere and will also increase your business interactions.

Regular users of social networks such as Instagram may get to know your brand there.

Customer Loyalty (Costumers Loyalty)

Improving the experience after the purchase of the customer will increase the reputation and credibility of a brand so that working in cyberspace and constantly monitoring the status of customers will increase their loyalty. Research has shown that 50% of people who follow a brand on social media are more loyal to it and buy from it regularly.

Convert the lead to real customer

Any activity in virtual networks, including posts, advertisements, comments, and email, is an opportunity to turn the audience into a customer. It does not matter if your business is B2B or B2C, using social media and social marketing is one of the best ways to attract leads and implement the Sales Funnel components of your business.

Inspiring and giving human personality to the brand (Humanization)

The case of businesses with poor branding is closed and these days customers not only care about their shopping method but also the brand of the seller company is in their priorities and social networks are more branded and attracted than other advertising methods. Leads help your business.

A better understanding of customers

Social marketing is a great opportunity to get familiar with the interests and behavior of customers so that by viewing comments and polls, you can find out what customers think about a brand. Pay attention to the posts that have received the most comments and like to better understand the topics of interest to your audience, in addition to examining the steps that visitors go through to buy to better identify your target audience.

Customer service

Social networks are the best place to respond to customer requests. Interacting with people was their main motto before brands opened up to social media. Social networks allow business owners to easily keep up with customer feedback and interact with them in a two-way manner. In addition, interacting with customers by following and offering new products to them improves brand owners’ relationships with customers.

Increase Inbound Traffic

Increasing the traffic of visitors to a business causes the return of capital to the pockets of the owners of that brand as soon as possible. In fact, without social media activity, you are only visible to people who are familiar with your products or who have purchased from you by searching for product-related keywords. But using social marketing strategies and producing regular and principled content on social media channels is a very simple and effective way to dramatically increase traffic and buy your products.

As you can see, social marketing has many benefits for small or large businesses, but the most important thing for success in social media is that the relevant strategies are feasible and practical. In other words, with the right use of social media marketing, you can identify target customers and turn them into regular and loyal customers through appropriate content. In the following, we will explain the strategies for better implementation of social marketing.

Read More: What is performance marketing?

Social marketing implementation steps

Before the advent of social media, advertising was traditionally followed, but now 30% of people interact with their favorite brands on social media at least once a month. This percentage will not only decrease but also increase over time. Will take. If you have not yet started your business on social media, here are some tips to help you have it professionally as soon as possible.

Step 1- Discovering Your Purpose

The first step in implementing social marketing is to set your goals. You have to ask yourself, what do you want to achieve by working in social networks? One of the most important components in goal setting is choosing the right metrics to measure them. In other words, are you looking to increase purchases and the number of leads, or do you just want more likes and comments ?!

For example, every week, post 3 photos of products that customers have bought on social networks and target a certain number of likes and comments for them.

Step 2: Check the current status of social networks

• You will not be able to move forward until you know where you are. To progress in social networks, pay attention to the following points.
• Assess your current status on social media.
• Thoroughly check your peripherals such as your URL, photos, and Bio in cyberspace.
• Compare your virtual activity with your competitors.
• Identify your target market.

In other words, you have to pay attention to which social network is more profitable for you, or sometimes you even need to stop your activity in one of the social networks. For example, a business that sells clothing will benefit from working on Instagram far more than Twitter.

Step 3: Determine the statistical population of customers

At this stage, you should categorize customers more carefully. For example, if most of the consumers of your products are housewives, try to divide them into smaller categories such as housewives in the north of Tehran or middle-aged housewives. In addition, you can include the channels that bring you the most visitors in your category. For example, housewives in the north of Tehran who have been attracted to your brand products through Instagram. Here are some important factors in categorizing customers:

• Age / Gender
• Geographical region
• Income
• Concern (which your products have a solution to solve)
• Favorites

Step 4: Define your mission on social media

It is to be aware of the prospect of your presence on social media. In other words, write down a simple sentence as a mission statement to guide you in the future about the responsibilities you face. In addition, by setting goals for your web pages on each social network. You will be able to find out how relevant and useful it is to your business.

For example, you can use Linkedin to hire experts and thus expand your business as much as possible, but for example, trying to sell a product (B2C products) on this social network seems a bit unreasonable. And it will waste your time and money.

In addition, when setting up your social media mission statement, use social media tools such as video to bring your brand voice to social media users. Social marketing allows you to attract more customers to your business with meaning.

Step 5: Build engaging content

As soon as you enter cyberspace and generate online content around your business, you think customer acquisition will simply happen, and you are sorely mistaken! To succeed in this field, you must follow comprehensive content planning. To get started, you should consider the following questions:

• What kind of content should you publish on your social networks?
• Who should be the target audience?
• How many posts should you leave per day or week?

By setting up your mission statement on social media and identifying target customers, you will be able to expose your content to them in the following forms.

• Picture
• Video
• Blog posts
• E-Books and infographics
• Gif
• Updated news from the company

Remember that to be successful in cyberspace, you have to create your content in different forms and avoid publishing only one type of content (for example, photos). Combining different forms of content will get more audiences with your company’s products. Follow the following formula to publish content principles:

1/3 of your social media content should be about services, products, and events related to your business (sales content)

1/3 of the content published in cyberspace should be to communicate with the audience, for example, educational, emotional and entertainment content is appropriate (sharing content)

The rest of your content produced in virtual networks should be related to employees and business managers and photos and videos of the company environment (brand content)

Producing quality content is one of the most important factors for the development of social networks. You will be able to use a content calendar to fully determine the date, network, and topic of your content and achieve success accordingly. do.

Final step: tracking and optimization

The trial and error process is the best guide to identify your strengths and weaknesses in social media, so try to follow all the following points carefully:

• Fully control clicks and visitors.
• Use the tools available to track and analyze likes, comments, and shares.
• Evaluate people who have entered the website through ads or social media posts through Google Analytics.

Of course, keep in mind that social marketing strategies are constantly changing and with the updating of social networking algorithms or the emergence of new social networks. You have to adapt to the changes that have taken place.

Examples from Social Marketing

In this section, we describe three social marketing campaigns and their performance in promoting the concept of social media marketing.

The campaign does not meet specific needs

The CoorDown (National Association of People with Down Syndrome in Italy) has launched a “No to Special Needs” campaign. In the form of social marketing shows that the title “Special Needs” is often for people with Down Syndrome. It can be wrong, and they, like all ordinary people, have normal needs. Needs such as social acceptance, employment, etc. The title “special needs” for this group of patients is an obstacle to the equal and normal treatment of this group of people in society.

Deadly plastic bag campaign

The campaign was launched by the BBDO Advertising Agency in Malaysia. It aims to reduce the use of disposable plastic bags and promote the use of recyclable plastic bags. The campaign is advertised through social marketing and prints images on disposable plastic bags that show how these bags harm the environment.

“Saving paper is saving the planet” campaign

The campaign is launched by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). This campaign aims to reduce the use of tissues and pay attention to wildlife and nature. The campaign is advertised on a paper towel with a picture of the South American continent. When the paper towel is full, the map of South America is green. The paper of the South American continent is gradually reduced using paper towels.

Conclusion

Social marketing, or social media marketing, is achieved through continuous activity and the production of quality content on popular social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Today, people spend a lot of time surfing social networks. Your presence in this space makes you visible to millions of users every day. In this article, we have reviewed the benefits of social marketing and explained its implementation steps. We hope you have noticed, and by using them in your business, you will see a significant increase in sales and the number of loyal customers.