Are you a small business in Houston, wondering how to improve your digital advertising campaigns?
You may have invested your ad budget in email marketing or mailers already, but perhaps you need to grow your audience. Have you considered social media marketing?
A few good social media marketing tips make all the difference between a successful campaign and wasted ad dollars. According to pew research, around three-quarters of adults under 65 use social media. Though Facebook and YouTube are most popular by a wide margin, many other social platforms are useful, depending on your goals.
We’ll explain why you should set up your social profiles now and get creative with your digital marketing and social media advertising. Read on!
Secure Social Platforms
Start small by securing an official account for your business on all the major platforms with the largest audiences. Currently, these will include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at the very least.
Secure your “vanity URL” (or unique account name) ASAP, especially if you are a new business. Even if you don’t plan to post just yet, you want to make sure you have registered the relevant user handles before someone else does. The audience on Facebook alone is so large that advertising on this platform has a powerful reach.
LinkedIn, YouTube, and some other platforms are also worthy of consideration. This may depend on where your customer or client base lives online and what type of content suits your particular product or service.
If you serve other businesses (B2B), you will likely want a LinkedIn account. You may want to try all of the social platforms initially and then narrow down your focus to the ones that work better for your business.
Committing to posting quality content on just a few platforms is better than spreading thin content everywhere.
Digital Marketing Plan
Setting out your objectives helps you stay focused. After you define the metrics of success, you’ll be able to use your advertising budget more efficiently.
For your social media marketing efforts to pay off, you will need to plan carefully.
A business social account is best used for strategic purposes rather than for casual use. There’s no secret formula that works, and it’s often a fresh take on an old idea that goes viral.
Social media marketing is an essential strategy for organizations that need to raise their profile. It also offers a unique opportunity to interact directly with your customer or client base. Not only can you engage your audience on the social channels, but you can also generate new leads and sales.
Some platforms allow you to embed a call to action straight into your social pages or posts. Use a direct engagement tool like this rather than a landing page link, wherever you can. A “call” button is most effective when a lead is already hot, so don’t risk losing them to a site page.
If you do use a landing page along with your ad, ensure that an identical visual style is used for both. The tone needs to be consistent so there is no confusion when a user clicks through.
Social Media Advertising
The huge quantity of personal information on social media platforms allows for well-targeted ad campaigns. Facebook, for instance, allows advertisers to focus their ads on audiences experiencing “life events” such as marriage. You can even drill down on various time phases within a relationship, which will be useful for businesses in several industries.
The more specific your targeting, the less money will be wasted on uninterested viewers. Check out the engagement rate to learn how effective your ads are at enticing a click vs. impressions. Combining many targeting options using information from your audience research yields maximum impact.
This is a balancing act, so don’t narrow down your focus so small that ad impressions almost disappear.
Keep a constant eye on how your ads perform, and tweak them if engagement starts to dip. Rather than serving the same ad to the same user repeatedly, consider social retargeting. A tailored ad can be shown only to users who are already motivated.
Advertising products or services to those who have already shown an interest or purchased is also more likely to result in a sale.
Strive for constant improvement, and engage in A/B testing whenever possible to increase your return-on-investment (ROI). If in doubt, try both ideas, and see which ad group responds best.
As you keep perfecting your most effective social ad strategies, you maximize those ad dollars.
Get Creative
One useful bonus of being active on social media platforms is the ability to study your competitors. Learn from their mistakes and see what’s working for them, incorporating the elements that resonate.
Don’t be limited to other organizations in your niche. There’s plenty to learn from all kinds of companies. Often, throwing in a curveball or adding a unique twist here and there can make you stand out from the crowd.
Hashtags are a useful tool that can rally audiences together in creative ways. Build a campaign, competition, or event around a hashtag, and maximize organic growth alongside sharing activity. Remember that hashtags can also be used on several platforms, extending reach and effectiveness.
Once you establish a good workflow, based on good results, keep going. Establishing a posting schedule is a good way of staying on track. Striking a balance will take trial and error.
Different audiences and platforms have varying conventions, so keep an eye on engagement and tweak appropriately. It’s generally considered best practice to keep promotional posts to less than 1 in 5.
When it comes to your social media, content marketing, and SEO, make sure you use an agency with expertise.
Social Media Marketing Tips
We’ve given you some social media marketing tips that will enable you to hit the ground running. Don’t begin and end your marketing efforts with local SEO alone.
If you’re a small to medium-sized business in the Greater Houston area of Texas, we can help. We are a digital marketing agency, and we specialize in content marketing, social media, and SEO. Our team will help grow your business and social media exposure using our targeted management strategies.
Contact us today to get started.
