Social Media Marketing: Understanding with Examples

To increase brand awareness and traffic , entrepreneurs or individuals market and promote their products or services online. Of course, by venturing into online business, businesses must develop online marketing.

The significant increase in internet users now-a-days makes digital marketing a powerful weapon for marketing products.

Well, one way that is now generating quite a lot of conversions in digital marketing is social media marketing.

So, in this article we will see what Social Media Marketing is? What are the strategies?

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses social media and websites to market business products or services through paid and organic means.

This marketing can interact directly with customers, resolve questions and complaints, announce new products and services, get feedback and recommendations, and build a customer community.

Social media marketing will involve several activities, such as building a presence on social networks, spreading brand awareness, engaging customers through uploaded content and increasing ROI (Return on Investment), driving traffic to websites, and so on.

Choosing social media marketing is important. This is because it relates to the suitability of the target market that has been made. Thus, the success of the marketing strategy that has been made will be related to the social media marketing used.

Business development requires strong data analysis from social media marketing . Data analysis carried out, such as analysis of engagement and reach, target market, and so on. It would be nice to run social media marketing to be able to integrate big data management.

Understanding Social Media Marketing According to Experts

So that it is not only based on assumptions, here are the definitions according to experts:

1. Susan Gunelius

According to Susan Gunelius, the meaning of social media marketing is a form of direct marketing or indirect marketing that is used to build awareness, recognition, memory, and action for brands, businesses, products, or people and is carried out using tools from websites social blogging, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, and content sharing.

2. Hubspot

According to Hubspot, the notion of social media marketing is the action of content creation. This content is used to attract the attention of potential customers on social media.

3. Neil Patel

According to Neil Patel, the meaning of social media marketing is the process of attracting the attention of people or individuals to be interested and bound by the content presented.

From the above opinion, the concept of social media marketing is closely related to promotional efforts and increasing brand awareness in the business.

Also Read: Digital Marketing Strategies and Types

Why is Social Media Marketing Important?

In the era of the digital ecosystem like now, social media has a massive influence on people’s lives in the world. Marketing strategies that use social media are considered a powerful way to reach various potential customers with various age ranges. Here are the reasons why social media marketing is important.

1. Increasing Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is a consumer or potential customer of a business who immediately recognizes and remembers the brand even if only by looking at the logo, image, color, or product samples.

The beginning of them being able to recognize the product or service being promoted is to glance at the product uploaded on social media. Because the product is uploaded continuously  , they start paying attention and even being interested in buying and using the product.

2. Increasing User Engagement

The more potential customers or customers who begin to know and pay attention to the brand or product of the business being run, the impact is that more customers can be obtained.

There is interaction with potential customers or customers through content uploaded on social media so as to increase user engagement.

3. Knowing Competitor Promotion Strategies

Nowadays, social media is no stranger to the public, so many business people are switching to using social media to market their products or services.

By using social media, it will be easier to learn about competitors’ promotion strategies to the product innovations they will issue.

4. Knowing Customer Responses to Products

The use of social media marketing in business to find out customer responses to products that are being sold. This response can be in the form of feedback, comments, or surveys.

Social Media Marketing Strategies

In general, there are several social media marketing strategies that you can apply. Some of these are as follows:

1. Conduct Social Media

It is very necessary to research and audit social media evaluation when you want to create interesting content for customers. You can also determine strategic defense and attack in promoting your business on social media.

2. Establish Social Media Marketing Metrics

The result of you doing research and auditing social media evaluations is getting complete and valid data. This data will be processed to determine social media marketing metrics.

Social media marketing metrics are data used to measure and determine the success of marketing using social media. In general, measurements use the help of tools, such as Google Analytics.

3. Study the Target Market Customer

Look at the tastes of customers or audience. Taste of Customers can be a benchmark for the suitability of the product you make.

By mapping customers, you can create interesting content to upload on social media. If the uploaded content matches the customer, engagement will be even greater.

4. Determine the Target Platform

Determine the platform to sell your product. Each platform has its own features. Of course this will affect the presentation of content.

5. Creating Interesting Content

Creating product content that attracts customers will result in increased engagement and sharing. Interesting content, getting people to buy and use the promoted product.

Before creating interesting content, you must do your research first. Find out what content customers and what types of content they like the most.

6. Collaboration with Influencers

Social media influencers are people who have social media accounts with large numbers of followers and have the ability to influence their followers to use the products they promote.

Look for influencers who match and represent the product that you want to promote. Each influencer has different rates depending on the number of followers and engagement generated.

7. Schedule Content Upload Time

Set the right time to promote the product, so that later many people will see your product on social media.

8. Take advantage of Ads

You can also take advantage of ads (advertising) services on each social media platform. This aims to increase the reach of your social media uploads.

There are several social media that provide advertising services, such as Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Twitter Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.

9. Evaluation and Controlling

Every content uploaded on social media will certainly produce accurate data. This data can be used for evaluation and control in the future.

From this evaluation, you will be able to learn the pattern of customers so that you can carry out some appropriate strategies for the next promotion.

Also Read: Marketing Plan: Definition, Examples, and How to Make

Popular Social Media Platforms Social

media is a relatively new technology, so its popularity and the platforms used will continue to change. Here are some of the popular platforms used by adults, including:

Facebook: 69%

Instagram: 37%

Pinterest: 28%

LinkedIn: 27%

Snapchat: 24%

Twitter: 22%

WhatsApp: 20%

Reddit: 11%

If you’re just starting out using social media marketing in your business, you should not use all the platforms above.

The social media platform used for the business depends on the marketing being carried out.strategies marketing will work better on certain platforms. This is because there are demographic differences between platforms.

Examples of Social Media Marketing

Now, it’s getting more exciting about the discussion of marketing in the media this time, isn’t it? Surely you are curious about examples of social media marketing that are often used. Here, we will take some examples of social media marketing from various social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, to Twitter of course with various commonly used formats. The ad types are as follows:

• Instagram
• YouTube Video Ads
• Instagram Ads
• Facebook Image Ads
• Twitter Video Ads

The Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing offers great benefits for brands. The following are the benefits that can be obtained when a business uses social media marketing.

1. Being Top of Mind

In today’s era, most people are immersed in a sea of ​​information so they have FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) or fear of missing out on information.

Content that is presented regularly and interestingly will always be remembered for them.

2. Get New Content Ideas

Information used wisely can be profitable. With the help of social media, you can get new content ideas through news, updates, content from competitors, and so on. To create brand awareness, brands rely on news and references in creating content that will be liked by customers.

Ways to get content ideas and increase engagement through crowdsourcing.

3. Online Reputation Management

Never ignore feedback, questions, or complaints. Proactive use of social media will lead to excellent customer service and engagement.

4. Expanded Paid Ads 

Social media platforms are capable of running paid ads with precise targeting. segment customers so that your product is in demand and purchased by them.

5. Effective Income Generating Social Media

Currently, social media is the most powerful means of marketing products for sale. With the help of paid advertising, the reach or reach of product promotions becomes wider and in accordance with the intended target market. It is not impossible that in the future social media will be a very effective income generator for your business.

Also Read: Digital Marketing: A Complete Guide for Beginners

What is the Purpose of Social Media Marketing?

If you are still confused and ask about the purpose of social media marketing, please provide the description below.

1. Increase Sales

As a business person, of course the purpose of the various marketing activities that you do online or offline is to get sales. The main reason is that after making a sale, your business will make a profit. The results of these profits will help the development of your business.

With the enormous potential of social media today, of course, the opportunity to increase sales is even greater. You also have to remember that the application of social media marketing does not mean it has to be related to the transaction process or buying and selling only.

You can use social media to measure the number of leads and users you can reach.

2. Build Public Interest and Increase Brand Awareness

The goal of social media marketing is to build and attract consumer interest in the products or services you sell. The next goal is to increase brand awareness of your business.

Entrepreneurs must have understood this, that social media marketing has become a low-cost marketing technique with unlimited consumer reach.

If you can apply the use of social media marketing well, it will have a significant impact on your business.

3. Acquiring New Consumers and Expanding Target Market

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are currently the most widely used social media for business people to help promote and increase online.

These three social media have a very large number of active users spread all over the world. Do you realize its potential, guys? It is certain that this large number of social media users can help various layers of business people to get potential consumers.

The goal of social media marketing is to make your target market reach wider. You can target more consumers using various features available from social media.

You can also use this opportunity to look for similar competitors so that you can analyze their marketing techniques, types of products sold, and other information. Do it to encourage your business to grow.

4. Cost Efficiency

Of course, any company will consider cost efficiency in conducting promotions or marketing strategies. Especially if the choice falls on the use of social media marketing. The reason is because social media plays an important role and contributes to reducing operational and marketing costs.

Compared to conventional marketing such as by telephone or SMS, even with direct visits to agencies or door to door, social media marketing can reach a wider range of consumers.

5. As a Company’s CRM Tool

CRM is Customer Relationship Management, an effort from the company to build a community of users of the products or services you sell. You can communicate with loyal customers, know passive consumers, or other consumer behavior.

Through a social media marketing strategy, you can interact with old customers, new consumers, or social media users who have just seen your product/service.

Feedback, suggestions, criticism, and comments from everyone who sees and uses your business products and services make it easier for companies to develop and improve the quality of these products and services.

What are Social Media Marketing Strategies

Social Media Marketing Strategies  have been discussed above but I want to explain it once again for new businesses and startups.

1. Set goals

This is your first step when you want to create a social media marketing strategy. Yes! Determine your goals for using social media. Is it for promotion? To serve customers? Or directing customers to the website? Determine the goals of social media marketing before doing marketing on social media.

2. Know your audience

Citing an explanation from hootsuite.com, knowing who the audience is and what they want to see on social media is the key to social media marketing. By recognizing the audience who visits your business’s social media, you can determine the appropriate form of action to carry out social media marketing.

For those of you who are still confused about determining the audience, please use the 5W + 1H concept from Alfred Lua follows.

1. Who are they? (For example, job title, age, gender, salary, location, etc.)
2. What are they interested in and can you provide? (For example entertainment, educational content, case studies, information about new products, and more.)
3. Where do they usually spend their time online? (For example Facebook, Instagram, or other social media.)
4. When are they looking for the type of content you can provide? (For example, morning, afternoon, evening, weekend, or on weekdays.)
5. Why would they want to consume that content? (For example to get better at work, adopt healthy lifestyle trends, to stay up-to-date with something, etc.)
6. How do they consume the content? (For example, reading social media posts, watching videos, etc.)

You can also determine the target audience if you are just starting a business but are still confused about using social media.

For example, you have a running shoe business. Then you can target the runners with male gender with an age range of 18-45 years.

For content to be shared, you can try it with the topic “Best Running Shoes Recommendation” in the form of a video and upload it in the afternoon or after work.

3. Determine the social media to be used

After identifying the audience of your business, you move on to the next strategy, which is to determine the social media you will use. Is it Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or something else? Don’t forget to do research first about the suitability of the social media that will be used with your audience. For example, based on age and occupation.

After doing research and finding suitable social media, you will easily determine which social media to use. For example, you have a target audience with an average age of 25 years with a hobby of running and regularly running marathons, then try using Instagram to share promotional content.

Apart from age, location, and occupation, you can also determine the use of social media based on the suitability of the content you want to share. Is it selling content in the form of videos and images, or just promotional information?

4. Determine the type of content to be shared

. Continue to the next social media marketing strategy, which is to determine the content you want to share with the audience. You can also use more than one social media, if the form of content to be shared is in accordance with audience the targeted

In addition, you can package content to make it more interesting and unique, such as video essays or info-graphics. For example, say you have an audience of 35-49 years old, and work as academics or lecturers. You can try sharing content on the Twitter platform by providing a thread about the latest research.

5. Analysis 

Finally, do an analysis of the marketing strategies that you have done on social media. You can analyze it based on the impact of the content you share such as the number of likes, engagement, reach, responses in the comments column, and also the growth in the number of followers. 

After doing the analysis, you will be able to see the patterns of your audience on social media. Ask questions about what kind of content they like, when do they most often access the content you provide, and what forms of promotion can increase sales directly? So from this pattern you can innovate when sharing the next content.

Also Read: What is Email Marketing? Types, Methods and Strategies

 

Conclusion

Social media marketing is the concept of promoting products or services with social media platforms targeting a specific group of customers. Social media marketing can be done on all social media platforms.

In addition to social media marketing and strategy, you also need a social media plan. Social media planning is very important to build and strengthen a brand organically. You can create a content plan or content calendar and upload it on social media consistently. This is because the priority of building brand awareness on social media is uploading content consistently.

You can also identify your target audience by creating a social media plan. Once you understand your target audience, you can create a content strategy that appeals to your audience.

In addition, the social media plan helps you to know the competitors in your business, so that you will understand the position of your brand with your business competitors.