Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that utilizes social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others to reach a targeted audience and promote a brand, product, or service. It involves creating engaging content, sharing updates, and utilizing paid social media advertisements to build brand awareness, drive website traffic, and generate leads and sales.

In addition to helping marketers reach out to new and engage with existing customers, social media marketing allows marketers to track their performances. Social Media advertisement has become a prominent marketing form to convey promotional messaging for B2B and B2C. The diverse distribution of social media platforms and awareness in this digital age has enhanced social media marketing. With so many social media platforms available today, businesses should develop a marketing strategy tailored to their needs and goals.

While pursuing any task, you should always have an end goal. However, in order to make the most of social media, it’s important to set specific end goals that align with your overall social media marketing strategy.

What are your social media marketing objectives?

Social media marketing objectives are centered around the following;

• Lead generation
• Lead nurturing
• Lead Conversion

Lead generation in social media marketing is the tactic to capture visitors’ attention and convince them they have landed to the right place. Grabbing visitors’ attention is aided by your content headlines, posts, or captions. Once you have their attention, lead them down the sales funnel path from being a visitor to a prospect.

Lead nurturing– in social media marketing, establishing a relationship between your brand and your consumers is a go-to social media marketing strategy. Lead nurturing is a crucial stage since it determines whether or not your customer will be a buyer. Nurturing starts when a company has a potential client’s contact information which is accessed through the inquiry/ subscription forms. With this information, the company can personalize email communication with the lead. To nurture your leads, leverage targeted content by tailoring an intriguing brief topic that will capture the lead’s attention. Insert a call to action – read more or request a quote to lure them into being potential buyers.

The final objective, lead conversion, determines social media advertising success. In this stage, you turn the leads into actual customers after taking them through the nurturing threshold. Enforce all the marketing strategies that stimulate a desire to buy a product/service. Use your website’s landing page to pinpoint your leads’ pain points and offer them a resonating solution to their problems. Include a subscription or an inquiry form on your landing page to allow your leads to inquire through email, creating room for email marketing and help you determine and follow up your potential buyers.

Use an SLA to align your sales and marketing. SLA is a Service-level Management used to outline an agreement between a business and a customer. It is also used between sales and marketing teams to better align their lead conversion strategy. The alignment between sales and marketing impacts social media marketing by increasing lead conversion rates.

Let’s dive into some insights into the three cores:

Connection– social media marketing helps you build meaningful connections with your audience by:

• Increasing your visibility
• Building a community and fostering a deep connection with your audience
• Personalizing your messages to reach specific audiences based on their demographics and interests
• Leveraging the power of influencer marketing. Which involves partnering with social media influencers to promote your brand.

Interaction– Social media marketing benefits you by promoting interactions between your brand and consumers/target audience. Interaction is achieved through the following;

• Engaging content
• Hosting giveaways and contests
• Using hashtags
• Offering real-time customer support.

Customer data– Social media marketing tools have the magnitude to fetch customer data and turn this factual information into actionable market analysis. Customer data can also be used to crowdsource new social media marketing strategies.

The extracted data can be utilized to enhance lead conversion in the following ways;

Targeted advertising: Social media platforms allow advertisers to target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and other factors. Advertisers can use customer data, such as age, gender, location, and previous interactions with their brand, to create targeted ads more likely to resonate with their audience.

Personalization: Social media marketing allows brands to personalize their messaging and content based on customer data. For example, a brand can use data on a customer’s interests and past purchases to suggest products or content more likely to appeal to them.

Customer segmentation: Social media platforms enable brands to segment their customer base into different groups based on their behavior or characteristics. Brands can then tailor their marketing efforts to each group, such as creating content or promotions specific to a particular age range or location.

Customer engagement: Social media platforms provide brands with valuable data on customer engagement, such as likes, comments, and shares. Brands can use this data to understand which types of content are most engaging and use that information to create more effective marketing campaigns.

Customer feedback: Social media platforms also allow brands to gather customer feedback through comments, reviews, and surveys. Brands can use this data to improve their products, services, and marketing efforts and identify potential customer pain points or areas for improvement.

Other benefits of social media marketing include the following;

Increase brand awareness. This is impacted by the extensive users of social media platforms, thus allowing you to reach large and diverse audiences easily.

Increase website traffic. Through social media marketing, you get to share links to your website, thus driving more traffic and increasing the chances of converting your leads to potential customers.

Enhanced SEO. Social media signals impacts Search Engine Optimization, which means that by regularly sharing content on social media, businesses can improve their website’s visibility in search engines.

Cost-Effective. Social media marketing can be more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods, requiring little to no advertising, printing, or distribution investment.

Have you set any social media strategy for your brand? As a brand, you should implement some social media strategies to finesse your brand’s success by generating leads and boosting conversions.

Here is a quick fix on how to create a social media marketing strategy

1. Define your goals
2. Identify your target audience
3. Select appropriate social media platforms
4. Create engaging and unique content
5. Get to know your competitors
6. Analyze your results, and adjust your social media strategy as needed

You can use various social media marketing strategies to promote your brand, engage with your audience, and achieve your business goals.

Here are some effective social media marketing strategies you should put in place:

Define Your Brand

Before giving your brand online visibility, give your brand a unique identifier that your audience will recognize. You can use your slogan or a logo, which should also be memorable to your audience and resonate with your service.

For instance, when you hear “If you like it, crown it,” what comes to mind in Kenya? – Crown Paints. This slogan has made the company outstand in social media marketing Kenya. The same applies to the phrase “Just do it” – Nike and their logo, which is well recognized.

Nike is a global sportswear manufacturer, their slogan aligns with the type of service they offer. The phrase “just do it” evokes a motivational sense of determination and hard work. This makes you think of athleticism and workout, which is directly related to their products.

Conduct Your Brand Growth Analysis

Narrate the pivotal moments of your growth encounter since you started your brand. Your story will create a connection with your audience since some of them may be able to relate and would want to know what you did to elevate your brand. It will captivate your audience and draw their attention to your brand, generating leads to your website.

Call- To- Actions (CTA’s)

In social media marketing, CTA is one of the core tactics to generate, nurture and convert leads into potential buyers. Once you have captured your audience’s attention, lure them into taking the next move by instilling them with the impacts/values of your services.

Develop a content calendar

Plan your social media content by creating a content calendar. Scheduling ensures you consistently post engaging and relevant content and maintain a regular posting schedule.

Use visuals

Visual content like images and videos is more engaging than plain text. Incorporate visuals into your social media posts to capture your audience’s attention and increase engagement.

Engage with your audience

Social media marketing is a two-way conversation. Engage with your audience by responding to comments, messages, and mentions. This helps build a relationship with your followers and fosters loyalty.

Run social media ads

Social media advertising allows you to target specific audiences and promote your brand or products to them through ads. It can be a cost-effective way to increase brand awareness and drive conversions.

The key to a successful social media marketing strategy is to provide value to your audience, be consistent, and engage with your followers.

There are several social media marketing advantages including ; increased brand recognition, improved customer engagement, cost-effectiveness, increased website traffic, a competitive edge, and measurable results. Tailored social media marketing strategies that instantly reach a range of target audiences are advantageous to any business.

There are several social media marketing tools, each with unique features and capabilities.

Below are some of the social media marketing tools:

Hootsuite : Allows you to manage multiple social media accounts, schedule posts, track mentions, and analyze social media performance.

HubSpot: Offers a social media marketing tool that helps you publish and monitor your content and create genuine connections with your followers.

Buffer: Helps you schedule and publish content across multiple social media platforms and provides analytics and insights to track engagement.

Sprout Social: Offers tools to manage social media accounts, track audience engagement, and analyze social media performance.

BuzzSumo: Helps you identify popular content in your industry, track mentions of your brand, and analyze social media performance.