How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy

For small businesses, social media is a great way to drive website traffic, generate leads, and increase brand awareness.  We’ve pulled together 5 key tips In order to help you create the best social media marketing strategy possible for your small business.  

Goals

This one may seem pretty basic, but it’s arguably the most important! Without tangible goals how will you know if your ad spend is worth it?  Make your goals as specific as possible.  Rather than saying “generate leads” specify “generate 300 leads over 2 months.”  This way when you are analyzing results you can determine if your goal was met, and if not, what can you do next time to get closer?

Platform

Determine what social media platform you want to advertise on.  You don’t have to limit yourself to one.  If you find that ads on one platform aren’t performing as well you can always reevaluate.  When choosing a platform(s) think about what is commonly used in your vertical and what your target audience is likely to be on.

Target audience

Who do you want to view your ad?  Think age, gender, location.  There are endless ways you can segment your market, but try to narrow down to what will be most effective regarding your campaign.  Identifying a specific target audience will not only help when you adjust the parameters of your campaign as you’re launching, but it can also aid in the content creation process.  

Content

Like we mentioned, think about your target audience.  Create your ad as though you’re writing to one person, be specific and engaging.  Accompany your copy with visuals that will capture your audience’s attention.  If you have access to your own images or videos use that!  Create different variations of your advertisement using varying visuals, headlines, and ad text to get the best results.  And most importantly, include a concrete call to action.  Direct your audience where you want them to go.  Your call to action should relate directly back to your goal.  Is your goal to increase website traffic by 10%?  Then your call to action should be directing viewers to your site.  

Optimization

After you’ve been running your ads for a few days, check-in to analyze how they’re doing.  When viewing the data and results is it evident that one specific headline or visual doing significantly better than the others?  Is one platform performing over the others?  Make adjustments as needed to align with your goals.

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