Everyone knows how to use social media as an individual – we know how to browse and share, but when it comes to building a successful social media marketing campaign from the ground up, it can be a huge challenge.
Why?
Because most brand owners simply don’t know where to start. There’s a huge difference between sharing something that just happened and planning a marketing campaign. Beyond that, getting it right and building successful campaigns is even more of a challenge, so how do we do it?
We asked Elijiah Pitman, founder of @funnysgod and CEO of Clout Media, to share some of his top tips and strategies his company uses to help their clients succeed.
How to Build Successful Social Media Marketing Campaigns
Set Realistic Goals for Your Brand
You can’t succeed if you don’t know the destination, and you also won’t succeed if you set the bar too high. Before you start planning, decide what your goal for this campaign is and set a time frame. Whenever Clout Media works with their clients, they first establish what the client wants to achieve from their campaign and in what timeframe they can expect results, so you need to do this for yourself, too.
Know Your Target Audience
Not every social media marketing campaign will target the same audience, nor the same platforms, so you need to think about which segment of your customer base you’ll be focusing on for this campaign. That doesn’t mean you’ll alienate other segments, it just means one is the focus for the duration of the campaign. For example, Porsche may promote their newest 911 model to their customers who don’t have children or have the money and desire to buy the newest model as soon as it’s announced. That doesn’t mean the family men and women who purchase their SUVs aren’t interested in the content, just that they’re not the target right now. You can do the same thing.
Don’t Plan Your Campaign Content Too Rigidly
It’s always tempting to preplan every post or image for your release, but you need to remember that your audience will only respond to the content that is most relevant and popular, so you need to be aware that things may change by week 10 and require slightly different content. You also need to be flexible enough to pivot the angle of your campaign if you find your audience isn’t responding to it as you’d hoped.
Define the Metrics That Matter
Which metrics are you going to champion and keep an eye on throughout this campaign? It’s best not to focus on too many at once, as this can lead you to change things that didn’t need to be changed, or miss out on something truly successful because you were trying to keep all metrics high. So, what metrics best align with your goal? Do you want people to purchase something? To click a link? Or, are you simply looking to grow your brand awareness?
It’s easy to become wrapped up in the “vanity metrics” such as the number of likes, views and comments, but that really only matters if it correlates with your goal. We’d all like a huge amount of visible engagement on our posts, but if a post got a ton of click-throughs, and no comments, you’d likely still be happy with the outcome if that was the goal.
Be Aware of What Your Competitors Are Doing
This is not an excuse to stay glued to social media platforms watching every move your competition makes – you simply need to keep an eye on what they’re doing to see what works, what doesn’t, and look for areas of opportunity for your own brand. Don’t copy them directly, but if you see something is working for their audience that may work for your goal, give it a try.
Assess Your Results Periodically
If you’re running a 90-day campaign, it’s a good idea to check in periodically, say at the 14-day, 30-day, and 45-day mark to see how things are progressing. You don’t want to be glued to your analytics every day (it’s too tempting to try and course-correct before you have valid data), but you do need to have predefined days to meet with your team and think about if something needs to change – especially if a big event has happened somewhere in the world, or if your competitor does something you need to react to.
If you follow all these tips, you’ll be well on your way to building successful social marketing campaigns every time. If you’re still unsure about how best to build successful campaigns for your business, Clout Media is here to help. Simply reach out to them here.
