According to Pew Research, a whopping 84% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they use one form of social media or another. Social media has become one of the largest digital vehicles for marketing and advertising today. Understanding how social media marketing can help your Tulsa brand and how to craft and execute a working social media marketing campaign for your Tulsa business is essential to maximize your potential for opportunities and success.
Build Your Brand’s Story
Storytelling goes a long way in society. From soda companies to today’s most prolific and popular billionaires, stories can trigger intrigues and garner interest in a business or brand that otherwise would have never existed.
Your brand’s story represents not only the products, services, and content your offer, but also you as the creator of the business and brand itself. Consider the following questions when you are in the process of developing the image and story for your business and brand:
- Why did you found your business/brand? What motivation did you have? Is there a purpose for your business and brand that is greater than yourself?
- How has your brand inspired you to become a better person? How does your business allow you the opportunity to give back and to get more out of life?
- Did someone inspire you to become an entrepreneur or did you create your own wealth and success from the ground up due to other circumstances? Making your story personal can also help to connect with others who have lived or are currently living similar circumstances.
- What goals do you have for your business and brand, both short and long-term? Do you want to change the world? Do you wish to improve a specific market or industry? How do you intend to help and give back to the world with the use of your business and brand?
Knowing how to effectively define and craft your brand’s story goes a long way when it comes to marketing and building an image for your business. You can also use social media to freely promote the story of your business and brand with the use of updates, traditional posts, and even third-party advertising platforms to fit with your preferred digital marketing strategy.
Free Publicity
With social media, take advantage of free publicity whenever possible. Use your brand’s story to help spread the word about your business and brand while also attempting to connect with those you intend to target and reach. Use your brand’s story to relate to those who may be in need of the products and services you have available. Spend time building the communities of your social media accounts to ensure you remain relevant and interesting to those who are loyal fans, followers, and customers of yous.
Build Value
Having a story for your brand is not only a way to help others remember what you provide, but it is also a way to add value to your business and name altogether. Companies that do not use social media or do not have an official website are far less likely to appeal to new customers, especially those who are searching for trustworthy and reputable sources. Social media provides a unique and affordable opportunity for anyone and any brand to become successful with enough hard work and an understanding of the significance of customer service.
Test the Waters
One of the most appealing aspects of social media is the ability to partake immediately and free of charge, even for business owners and business accounts. Testing the waters on various social media platforms can also provide valuable insight into which networks are best for your brand based on the target audience and demographics you intend to reach.
Even if you have a very limited budget, it is possible to create and test business accounts on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and even Snapchat without fees or major investments. Creating pages for your brand is always free to get started and use without additional features.
Create and Build a Community
Using social media marketing to help grow your business and brand is ideal for those who want to hone in on an audience that is extremely active and engaged on social media. With social media, create and build a community and loyal following that has a genuine interest in supporting your brand and learning more about the products, services, and even content or information you have to offer.
When using social media platforms, streamline your brand accounts by using the same name as your website and the brand itself (wherever possible and applicable). Avoid using odd or funky spellings and always utilize proper grammar when building a brand, especially when doing so from the ground up.
Avoid using hyphens and unique spellings when registering your domain name and trademarks, especially if you are building a brand in a thriving, competitive, or even in a highly saturated industry.
Interact With Followers and Fans
One major benefit of using social media for your brand is using it to interact with followers, fans, and even loyal customers or clients. Interacting and engaging with those who follow your brand helps to maintain and retain their interest in what you have to say and offer while also appearing more positively to new followers.
Engagement is another major element involved in tracking the success rate of any digital campaign, including social media marketing campaigns themselves. Keeping your fans and followers engaged with social media can be done by responding and commenting back to users sporadically, or even by highlighting or featuring specific comments that stand out to you.
Maximize Your Online Reach
Choosing the online and digital route of marketing is a great way to maximize your reach. Social media provides a plethora of opportunities to not only connect with current followers, fans, and customers, but also new prospective customers as well as other businesses and brands that are local or relevant to your own company.
Additionally, because social media is free to use and provides billions of users to access, the options are virtually endless when it comes to crafting and launching social media campaigns that attract new customers and help to generate revenue.
Host Contests and Giveaways
Helping your business and brand to stand out from the crowd in a saturated and competitive market is not always easy, nor is it always straightforward. One way to help boost your brand’s online visibility and appeal to your target audience is to do so by hosting contests and giveaways on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
Hosting contests and giveaways not only helps to spread the word of your brand to other relevant users and prospective customers or visits, but it is also ideal for boosting SEO, or search engine optimization. The more a contest or giveaway is spread, shared, and promoted, the easier it becomes to boost the ranking of your official domain and website within top search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
Patience is Key
Building an online community rarely occurs overnight, which is why patience is key to long-term success, even when working online and in a fast-paced realm. Individuals are bombarded each day with hundreds, if not thousands of advertisements, programs, games, groups, and even promotions that are relevant and distracting to them. In order for your community to truly grow and maintain, it must do so organically and with plenty of patience and understanding.
Use Analytics
Another perk of social media marketing is the built-in analytics solutions that come along with today’s platforms, including both Facebook and Instagram. If you utilize services such as Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads, you are provided with in-depth analytics reports whenever you launch and run new digital social media campaigns on the platform of your choice.
Using in-depth analytics and analytic reports is a way to discover more about what content appeals most to your current followers as well as which digital ads and campaigns are providing you with the best returns.
Learn About Your Competition
Even if you have a thriving local business or a loyal customer base offline, social media can help you to learn much more about your local, regional, and even international competition, regardless of your chosen market or industry. With social media, it has never been easier to research local competitors to learn more about their brand’s story, their product purpose, as well as the overall quality of the products and services they provide. When you understand the ins and outs of your competition, you can always stay ahead of the curve and appealing to your target audience.
Paid Social Media Marketing
Paid social media marketing solutions vary and may or may not work depending on the type of website or brand you are promoting as well as your preferred target audience.
Using paid advertising services from social media conglomerates such as Facebook and Instagram is one way to get started immediately with paid advertising, even if you are not familiar with social media marketing and analytics yourself.
Choose Your Target Audience
Before you get started with any social media marketing campaign, paid or free, it is important to choose your target audience. Select the target audience and demographics you intend to reach based on the type of business or brand you are running. What age range, gender, and location do you intend to target? Are there hobbies and interests your target customers are likely to have in common that you can seek out with the use of premium social media campaigns?
Using tools such as Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads is a way to build successful digital marketing campaigns with varying demographics, interests, and other criteria that is most valuable to you and your brand.
Target by Gender and Location
Social media marketing makes it easier than ever to target prospective customers by gender, location, and even by specific hobbies or interests that are most relevant to your brand’s products and services.
With traditional direct mailers and offline marketing strategies, it is not always easy to determine who is living in a home or whether or not they are likely to have an interest in what you have to offer. With social media, broaden your horizons and options to not only boost your ROI but also to reduce wasting your marketing and advertising budget.
Track Specific Variables
With both paid and free social media marketing tools, it is possible to track specific variables depending on the platform and solution you choose. Track-specific variables for your social media campaigns such as responses, CTR (clickthrough rate), and even completed sales or referrals. Using social media marketing can help just about anyone to learn more about their business and who it appeals to most anywhere in the world.
Learn Buying and Online Shopping Patterns
If for nothing else, paid social media marketing platforms and tools are extremely helpful for those interested in the buying and online shopping patterns of their visitors and target audiences.
With in-depth analytics, discover how your most loyal customers typically buy from you to determine the best marketing methods that offer the highest returns. Track users from email campaigns to social media campaigns to determine which method of promotion is more likely to result in a sale or an ongoing service request.
Building a successful business and brand from the ground up requires more than delivering high-quality products and services to a thriving market or industry. In order to maintain ongoing success, effective marketing is a must. With the right marketing strategy and a social media marketing campaign that helps you to outshine your competition, continue building onto your brand’s success as you simultaneously spread the word of your business and the products, services, and content you have to offer.
D2 Branding provides exceptional digital marketing services in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the surrounding areas. For a complimentary 15-minute marketing consultation with D2 Branding, call us today at (918) 520-8012.