smm

Social Media Marketing 101

Social Media Marketing (SMM) isn’t our primary service line, but we do get quite a few inquiries about the channel. A properly run Social Media Marketing campaign can be a wonderful secondary or tertiary option for many businesses. Allow me to explain…

We consider SMM to be a wonderful branding tool. In other words, it’s a great way to create interest and awareness in your company, and the products and services that you offer. However, we do not typically look to SMM as a primary generator of leads or sales. After all, most people do not go to Facebook and Instagram looking to purchase a product or hire a service based company. It’s the ads that they see once they’re on the platform that makes all the difference.

Unlike Google PPC and SEO (both paid and organic search marketing), where a potential customer has to pass through two separate filters, SMM doesn’t require a visitor to do anything. With a PPC ad, a searcher has to type in keywords that trigger the ad (filter # 1) and then make the choice to click through the ad to the website (filter # 2). This double filtering process removes a lot of the irrelevant traffic that a client would otherwise receive, thereby increasing their ROI significantly. It’s no wonder that PPC (paid search) is our primary and preferred channel for most of our clients.

With a Social Media Marketing campaign, Facebook and Instagram users will see a product or service in their feed, whether they want to or not. They don’t have to type in any keywords or choose to click through an ad. It’s just served up to them when they use the platform. The question is, once they see that ad, what do they do about it?

That’s why proper targeting is so crucial to any successful SMM campaign. You need to build highly relevant, specific audiences that are likely to be interested in the products and services that you are offering. Otherwise, your ads will be displayed to people who have no interest in what you’re selling. The goal of any SMM campaign is to serve those ads up to the right people, so that they choose to engage with them, post view.

Of course once you create those audiences, you need to create concise, attractive video and image ads that convey your message in a very small amount of characters. Facebook and Instagram don’t give you much space (character limits) to say what you want to say, so brevity and creativity rule the roost. You want to entice these viewers to engage with your company, and you only get one chance to make that first impression.

If all of this sounds too difficult, consider giving us a call to run your next Social Media Marketing campaign. It’s a wonderful way to augment a successful PPC and SEO strategy.

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