How To Use Social Media Marketing For Your Business

A PwC Survey reported that one third of customers attribute their purchase inspiration to social media. This more or less rests the discussion on the effectiveness of social media in marketing. In addition to inspiring purchases, social media plays an important role throughout the purchase decision making process.  In all five stages of purchase decision – needs recognition, information search, assessment of options, buying decision, and post purchase evaluation – social media has the bigger role. Let’s dive deeper to see how you can use social media marketing.

Identification of targeted prospects – Social media marketing helps businesses achieve multiple goals that include increasing traffic, and creating a strong channel for interaction between customers. The first objective would be to identify the targeted prospects. This is more complex than imagined. There are various factors that need to be considered before identifying the ideal category(ies) of prospects. For instance, demographics, behavior and interests of prospects are determining factors in identifying cohorts. Most social media platforms have categorized users across different categories; the challenge is in getting the combination right. Build clear buyer personas that can be used for matching and zeroing in on the right categories of users.

Getting on the right platform – Depending on the nature of your business, it is necessary to focus on specific platforms for best results. It is always a good idea to be present in multiple platforms, but this entirely depends on the nature of your business. Instagram, for instance, caters to a type of audience and products that are significantly different from the users of LinkedIn as a platform for marketing. While presence across platforms would help, the budgeting towards each platform needs to be carefully planned.

Businesses need to clearly work towards specific goals when relying on social media marketing. For instance, engaging customers is an entirely different goal from generating leads. It is therefore necessary to use strategies that are goal specific when it comes to social media marketing.