Don’t Overpay on Your Next Social Media Campaign
October 24, 2018
Social media has become something of a phenomenon in the marketing world. With humble roots in the art of sharing daily life with friends and family, social media has expanded into corporate culture with ferocity. Companies are now spending billions of dollars each year to market their brands through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like. In fact, studies project next year’s annual social media spending to be more than $17-billion. This is incredible considering how little social media was used by businesses only 10-years ago. Now, if a company isn’t present on social media, they might as well be invisible in the online community.
Since social media has made itself such an essential service for modern businesses for marketing purposes, it only makes sense that so many businesses are paying big bucks to get the best social media campaigns possible. So much so that some businesses are overpaying on services which could easily be obtained for much less. Looking for ways to improve your business’ social media game without breaking the bank? Here are some ways to cost effectively manage your next campaign.
Build on Past Successes: Going viral is the dream of all social media campaigns. Once a video or ad goes viral, it can be shared with millions around the world, increasing traffic to your website, increasing sales of your product, and increasing knowledge and awareness of your brand. The problem is that most companies who see a campaign go viral simply sit back, put their feet up, and let the momentary fame run its course. While you will gain quite a number of followers and income this way, it will be short lived, and once the next new trend goes viral your video will be quickly forgotten.
A good way to increase revenue and save money on marketing is by building on past successes, like viral videos. If you’ve been lucky enough to see a campaign go viral, don’t let that popularity slip away. By continuing to pump that video, create others which will increase curiosity about the original video, and engage in marketing for that initial video, you’ll find that numbers may decrease from viral status but stay steady rather than depleting altogether.
Create Clear Obtainable Objectives: One of the biggest mistakes a business makes online regarding social media is not knowing what they want to get out of the experience; more followers, more traffic, more money? Great, but these are too broad. By setting specific targets you want to reach and measure these goals, you can save money and time spent on crunching out unnecessary content and promotions to an audience who may not even be actively watching.
Much like you would structure a business plan to achieve a set income per year, with targets to reach each quarter, your social media goals should reflect a similar setup. By understanding the coveted outcome, you can better design and implement a plan to achieve it and waste less time on other aspects of online marketing.
Recycle Content in New Ways: It’s considered a social media marketing faux pas to repeat the same information, repost the same blog or video, or copy content and repost it; however, there’s no rule against repurposing that content. Any search engine optimization expert will warn you against duplicate content, as it’s something that not only Google watches for but social media networks as well.
Test Things Frequently: Whether you have a social media manager or you run your own business campaigns online, it’s important to test as you go. One of the problems businesses have with social media is relying on one tactic over and over again despite poor results. For example, if you haven’t had much luck with “share and like to enter this contest” type of campaigns, it could be that your viewership isn’t interested. Try a new tactic, such as “guess how many jellybeans are in this jar to enter”, or “caption this photo to enter”. After a few attempts you’ll notice one has done better than the others and be able to focus in on that method of promotional marketing in the future.
Take Advantage of the Apps: There are several different applications businesses can use to familiarize themselves with different platforms, combine platforms into one simple tool, or even recycle posts so you don’t have to do it manually. Some of the most popular tools for the job include MeetEdger, Hootsuite, Everypost and Buffer.
You can find a more thorough description of each app and what it does through their prospective websites. For some businesses, these apps do enough to prevent the need of a social media manager altogether, helping save costs for salary and research.
The big idea here is that social media marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, one of the best parts of social media is that it’s generally free to use if you know what you’re doing and how to make the most of your accounts. Of course, there are still paid advertising spots, PPC promotions, and the like on social media, but these aren’t necessary if you can hone your networking skills and draw in your target market with updates, photos, videos, and contests alone.
There’s never been a time when online marketing was so simple, affordable, and accessible to all businesses. Even small businesses have an opportunity to get their foot in the door and become a recognizable brand with these hacks.