How to Market Your Business On Social Media: The Ultimate Guide

How to market your business on social media? Well, things have changed a lot since a few years ago. In the past, you used to get a coupon in the mail, drive to the store, and buy a product. That was your buying process not too long ago.

Now it seems like an almost antique concept. Online behemoths like Amazon have taken over as the go-to shops for everything from paper towels to Apple Watches.

Having said that, it’s no-brainer noticing that digital marketing and social media are taking over the marketing actions.

So, how to market your business on social media to use all the advantages that these new platforms bring nowadays?

Even searching for a product on Google or Amazon is starting to feel archaic. We all spend much time on social media; understandably, it’s leading a shift in the eCommerce buyer’s process.

Social media is now proposing more efficient online marketing processes to reach consumers, and the eCommerce industry is taking note. Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, among others are useful to find information, check reviews, or simply ask for a piece of advice.

In this article, you will discover a step by step guide on how to market your business on social media to get positive results in your marketing efforts.

1) Identifying Needs and Wants

The buyer’s process always starts with information gathering. Social media allows consumers instant results and recommendations from friends, families, and influencers.

It begins long before a decision is even made to buy something. A user will rarely log-in to Twitter or Facebook with the intent of purchasing something.

It’s more of an environment of hanging out and catching up on the news—whether formal or personal news.

However, within that environment exist brands with both organic and paid reach. If an ad or shared post happens to catch their attention, they can quickly grab product reviews and scroll through pictures.

The information required to make a purchase decision is right at their fingertips and can speed up the buying process.

2) Recognize Business Strategy

Your business strategy will drive your social strategy and make it more clear how to market your business on social media.

If you want to create brand awareness, it’s a different approach and a more long-term perspective than generating more sales or profitability this month.

Know your business’s overall needs and decide how you want to use social media to contribute to reaching them. Your strategy will help you see the results that you want to achieve. It will serve as your ultimate guide to create your goals and KPIs.

3) Establish Marketing Goals

Your business goals will be worthless if you don’t have specific parameters that define when each is achieved.

Let’s say you want to generate leads and sales to your business. How many leads and sales do you need to make before considering your goal a success?

Your objectives define how you want to go from an unfulfilled goal to a fulfilled purpose. You can quickly identify your marketing objectives with a SMART approach: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

For example, you want to increase your leads and sales by 40%. That’s being specific. You can keep track of your objective by using analytics and tracking tools.

How about when you want to increase your leads and sales by 2000%? Leap of faith is not enough. Yes, that’s a specific objective, but would it sound logical with your current resources?

Pick a marketing objective that you can achieve.

Always make sure that your marketing objectives align with your company’s overall vision. If it doesn’t, stop and save yourself from wasting your efforts.

Set a deadline. When do you want to achieve your goal, a month from now, a year from now, or in 5 years?

You decide. Your objective to increase your leads and sales by 40% may be specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant, but without a deadline, you’re heading to another direction.

4) Establish Your Social Media Goals

After you have clear your business goals, your marketing goals, you can define your social media goals aligned with the ones decided beforehand.

Below is the list of your company’s most common goals using social media.

5) Characterize Buyer Target

Learn your buyer personas. The more information and specific you know about them, the better it will be for your strategies when you start to market your business on social media.

Their age, occupation, hobbies, income, interests, problems, pains, challenges, obstacles, likes, dislikes, etc., are just a few of the information you need to know about them.

6) Research Competition

When you research for your competition, you will find out which social media channels they are posting, when they are posting, and how they position themselves.

This information will help you learn the type of content they’re posting and how their audience responds.

You will also have an idea about their buyer personas, which could be the same as yours. Also, you will find out how you’re doing compared to them.

7) Use Strategic Channels and Tactics

Posting to all social media platforms is not a good idea. Hence, choose a handful of social media channels where your consumers are.

Avoid wasting your effort on the wrong platform. For example, if your buyer personas are professionals who are looking for jobs, It would be best if you did not spend a lot of your time posting on Tumblr or Instagram. Instead, use more often LinkedIn.

Know which social media platforms you need to focus on and exert a lot of your effort on them. Every social media channel is unique. Each tactic for these networks is different. If you want to know how to market your business on social media, understand the native environment of each platform.

To choose the best for your business, you can check this article where we list 8 great social media websites for your business.

Make sure you choose the right channels to spread your message. Some networks are better than others, depending on your buyer persona.

8) Craft a Content Strategy

Without great content, your social media efforts are meaningless.

A successful content strategy on how to effectively market your business on social media has three critical components: post type, post time, and post frequency.

Type

Your type of post is dependent on its form and context. When you say form, it pertains to how you present your information. Is it the image, link, video, or plain text?

Moreover, when it comes to context, it’s the voice and personality of your business. Is it serious, funny, educational, or emotional, for example?

Time

At what time do you need to post your content? There are many pieces of research and recommendations over the internet about when you should post your content but use them as your guideline.

It would be best if you still did your homework by finding out the best time to post your content for each social media channel for your audience.

Frequency

After knowing what to post and when to post, the third ingredient is to set the frequency. You don’t just post your content like a mad man, and if you do so, you might get your fans bored or annoyed.

They will even report you as spam. Finding the perfect posting frequency for your business is imperative because it’s the difference between creating more engagement or losing fans when they are unlike or unfollowing.

9) Assign Budget and Resources

Do you have a budget and the resources to roll out a strategy to market your business on social media?

Before answering this, review the tactics you’ve chosen to achieve your business goals and objectives.

Some business owners set a budget first before setting up the strategy. However, I recommend setting your plan first, then determining your budget that fits your approach. Then make a detailed list of the tools you’ll need and their projected annual cost.

10) Share Roles

The truth is that you can’t run a successful social media campaign on your own. You will need others to help you execute your marketing strategies.

It’s also crucial to know who’s responsible for what to increase productivity and to avoid confusion and overlapping efforts.

Assign roles for each team member. There are tools, such as Basecamp or Trello, which you can use to manage your team effectively.

These tools will help you save a lot of time and money.

11) Facilitate the Purchase

Social media and brands have begun to innovate together to remove unnecessary steps in the buyer’s process.

You’ve likely already seen the example of Domino’s and their program where a pizza emoji tweet will automatically order delivery to your house. That’s an insanely simple path to purchase. There’s only one step needed to go from:

Hungry for pizza!”

To ordering the pizza.

Social networks are working on more ways to cut out steps from interest to purchase. Twitter and Pinterest have introduced buy buttons, allowing consumers to make purchases from the social network.

There’s no need to exit an app to go to an external merchant website to make a purchase. It’s a more straightforward process for the user and keeps them on the social network longer. It should be a win-win for those who take advantage.

12) Manage your Customer Service With Efficiency

One of the best parts of social media, especially for brands, is the ability to connect directly with individuals.

That one-to-one connection allows for more personalized customer experience. You can send a tweet to an individual that can be tailored to their needs and expectations.

There’s no guessing about whom you’re targeting—they are right in front of you. Although it’s a great thing, it can also add some extra burden on brands.

Consumers expect brands to be extremely responsive. If you’re not responding to social messages within a few hours, you could be frustrating to your customers.

So after purchase, brands need to be prepared for questions and complaints. Someone who buys a product online is likely going to want online customer service as well.

Having a responsive social media team can go a long way in retaining customers and building loyalty.

13) Data, and More Data

What else is social media doing for the eCommerce buyer’s process?

It’s informing brands with truckloads of data. You can break down who follows your brand with a simple look through social analytics to build buyer personas and useful targeting tools.

It’s also effortless to use social to gather data straight from consumers with surveys and polls.

Social media can help take the guessing game out of online marketing strategies and save brands valuable time and money.

Without surveys and polls, brands can also get valuable data by listening. Social listening allows brands to gather useful customer insights without being intrusive.

Social media users are talking about brands online. You can learn a lot about yourself and your competitors if you listen.

All of which will help identify the messages needed to sell even more products—like if you should be using more pizza emoji.

Understanding how to market your business on social media is a great start…

There’s no concrete strategy on how to market your business on social media. Over time, you will discover that some of your tactics are not as effective as you thought they would be, and you’ll find new and more effective tactics.

Know your business’s overall needs and decide how you want to use social media to contribute to reaching them. Would it sound logical with your current resources and marketing strategy? Constantly adapt quickly to changes and try these changes out on your overall social media.

Many business owners and managers are ignoring completely or partially these steps, and they’ve been using social media the wrong way, not defining the right goals and therefore, not measuring ROI adequately. As a result, they’re wasting their money, efforts, and time while leaving money on the table.