Content marketing seems to be the key for the 2015. But a lot of companies forget that the first step in order to have a strong social marketing strategy is about knowing better processes and market of their own businesses.
“Bring me more customers”. My answer usually is: which customers?
Because the ultimate goal of a social marketing strategy is not to bring more customers but to do more profit.
So let’s see what you need to know very well before starting a social media plan.
1) Business model
Do you sell a single expensive item or do you sell a subscription?
You sell cars: your customer has to make a decision to buy an expensive product that will keep for an average of 3 years. Your problem is first how to show the product in order to sell it, but then you have a customer that will not buy anything from you for a long time that must be kept happy because he could be a returning customer in 3 years.
You sell an online subscription based service: your problem is completely different. You need to keep engaged that users otherwise he will cancel the subscription and never come back.
ROI changes too: a social marketing campaign to sell cars needs to focus on conversion. Executing a social strategy for an online service needs to focus more on retain customers because if the business acquires a customer and lose it after 15 days there is no profit
The key elements to consider are: sell value, churn rate, recurring sales.
2) Target
Which is your customer? Your right customer?.
Businesses need to understand a lot about the customers they should have before setting up a social strategy.
How the customer can be reached?
Which is the cultural and social level of the customers?
How the customer looks at the company and the product/service it sells?
If the business is mainly a local one, some channels cannot be effective like others. If the business is a highly professional company the kind of communication cannot be based on prices but mostly on showing the high level of skills of the persons that are in the company.
The key elements are: which are the elements customers use to make their choice, which is the customers’ profile, where is the customer
3) Product/Service communication style
Is your product described through words, images, slogans or what else?
Both the channel you are going to use both the content you have to focus more change a lot based on the kind of product/service you have.
A construction company must show what it is capable of and therefore images are very effective. A CPA firm has to focus more on text and numbers because this is what customers are expecting more.
The key elements here are: how can you describe at best your product/service, how a customer can understand your product/service.
There are other elements to consider afterwards but those three are the main important.
If you are going to hire someone to take care of your social marketing, be sure he is able to understand and help you understanding your business. It is the most important thing to check.