Does social media marketing work for your business? 

We put together a series of five blogs to help businesses plan their social media marketing. This blog article tries to answer the question does social media marketing work for your business or not. 

• 5 mistakes you make in social marketing
• The impact of video on marketing
• How to use engaging content in social media advertising
• Does social media work for your business?
• Tested ways to boost content marketing in social media

Social media marketing is a complex topic and can be approached from many different angles. 

In this article, I will focus on the aspect of paid advertising, but I will also be looking at content production because it is the famous other side of some marketing coin [And don’t forget the coin itself, without investment, you can’t expect results either.]

In a nutshell, marketing is about reaching potential customers with messages they are interested in.

Everything else is tactics, testing different channels and propositions.

Therefore, the question “does social media work for marketing your business” needs to be answered in a diplomatic way. “It depends.”

It depends on:

• Whether your company’s customers are on social media.
• Exactly which social media channels are they using.
• How you define “working” - i.e., what metrics you use to determine success
• And, what tactics you want to use to transform your goals into results.

Let me throw out a slightly provocative argument: in today’s competitive business environment, the most socially active individuals are the ones doing the best. The ones with unique products and services and whose content is authentic get the most exposure on social media.

The more instagrammable/tweetable your company’s content is, the more visibility and interest you’ll get on social media. And the more revenue you’ll get below the line.

Let’s get down to the first point: which social media channels are used in the USA and whether your company’s customers can be reached there?

Facebook is the market leader in social media channels (SatelliteInternet)

SatelliteInternet publishes statistics on the market shares of different social media channels. For the USA the figures are very much in line with common perception: Facebook is by far the most used channel, followed by Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Snapchat.

Facebook and Instagram are the easiest to target

Targeting on Facebook and Instagram, at least, doesn’t stick to a lack of options. In fact, the opposite; often the difficulty of choosing between different options makes decision making difficult. Fortunately, we can always test different audiences and find the ones that work best.

Facebook and Instagram are an easy choice for digital advertisers because both are managed through the same interface. This advertising platform gives you access to people’s interests, age, or even whether they are the mother or father of a child aged 0-1.

Facebook user numbers (napoleoncat.com 2021)

Another good reason to choose Facebook is the high number of users: almost 235 million Americans use Facebook at least once a month.

What about other social media channels for paid advertising: Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube? Or the newer entrant Snapchat?

Of course, you should not forget these channels. It may even be better for grabbing the attention of the audience on a channel where your competitors are not joined already. Or accept that there is a reason for not using the channel and put your fighting pants on your feet & jump into the competition arena among others.

When defining the metrics for social media marketing, it’s worth starting with your objectives: what you want to achieve with your marketing campaign. When setting your goals, you should be realistic: if your customers don’t buy from the first time they see you at a trade fair, you shouldn’t aim for a hard sell in social marketing.

Reaching a large enough target audience, testing the most effective messages, and getting visitors to visit your website are often more appropriate goals for social media marketing. 

Your website analytics and conversion optimization will determine how much traffic you can expect to drive to your site. The better you design your site, the more juice you’ll get out of your visitors.

We’ll write more soon about Facebook advertising and ways to get to the bottom of why your social marketing isn’t working.

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