How to use social media to win more customers

With 70% of SMEs saying that they believe marketing is more important than ever to communicate with customers, where do you start in shaping a marketing plan that works? *​source MTM 2020

Small businesses need effective options to make the most of their budget and resources. With the right strategies and tools in place, small businesses can operate at a high level, even with more limited resources.

That’s why we shaped these simple straight talking hints and tips​. ​In the last two marketing business insights hints  we walked through;

1. How to shape an effective marketing strategy
2. How to shape your content marketing – the engine behind your marketing plan

Now you’ve built unique and persuasive brand stories as part of your content plan your marketing messages will have more impact. This branded content should have a consistent look and feel across channels, but be delivered in a style and tone that is relevant for each unique channel. Well designed content shows that you understand your customers’ needs and/or challenges, by providing value or interest.

In this third marketing insights we share;

Where to share your content marketing to increase marketing ROI. 1. Uploading content onto your website

It’s important to create an area on your web site where you can share content – most websites have this in their ‘latest news’ or ‘updates’ area in their navigation.

Uploading your content onto your web site increases your SEO rankings, especially when you include relevant keywords. You can find keywords to target your target audience/ personas using the following tools: ​Google Search Console, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, and Google Keyword Planner.

Search engine optimization is the process of making your website rank high in the search engine results pages for a certain term. This allows your content to be visible and easily accessible to those searching for the term, or something similar to it.

This is vital as according to HubSpot, 62% of consumers use a search engine when they want to learn more about a new business, product, or service, while 41% use a search engine when they’re ready to buy.

You can link this content to your email and social media posts driving traffic back to your website. When you review your website analytics traffic should spike when you publish relevant, interesting content to your target audience.

Sharing content via email marketing

Market research firm Radicati predicts that by the end of 2023, the number of email users worldwide will top 4.3 billion. This makes sense. How many people without an email address do you actually know? Not many.

This widespread use of email is the reason why email marketing is such a powerful way to engage with people who have shown interest in your product, service, website, or brand. Which is why it is super important to curate an up to

date and growing email database of people in your target audience, whilst following GDPR guidelines, of course. This is where effective marketing is a pure numbers game. The more relevant email addresses you have, the more conversions you will generate. You can use lead magnets on your website to capture email addresses, we’ll come back to this later in future hints and tips.

When you utilise email marketing you own your own data, so you won’t have to worry about a website going down or a social media algorithm shifting beneath your feet.

Email ranks firmly as a top channel for providing opportunities for both customer acquisition and brand awareness so it should always be a marketing priority, ahead of pure social media.

Tracking open rates and responses will help you to understand what content is resonating most. On average a consumer needs to see your content 5x before they are likely to start recognising and responding to your brand messages. Having a clear nurture strategy for those people who are clicking through or liking your content is the next stage of your email marketing strategy – we’ll come back to this at a later date.

Social media channels

When you start to understand your target audience/ personas you’ll be able to track which social media channels they show up in. If you have a B2B business LinkedIn is a must, as is twitter. If you have a consumer facing business facebook is still the largest platform in the world however audiences are fragmenting and instagram and tik tok are two of the fastest growing.

The good news is that all these channels are free to access. You just need to edit your content marketing to be its most effective for each channel. It costs nothing to give them a go and learn from the experience.

Publishing relevant content on social media channels should manifest in growing follower numbers, likes and shares. Tracking these will help you to refine your content marketing strategy.

Paid for social

You don’t need a huge budget to try out and build your conversions through paid for social using your content. Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram all allow you to target your audience in a simple self serve model where you can set a small budget to learn a) what content gets the most traction and b) how to keep refining your audience selection. This can help provide data which shapes your marketing strategy, creating a virtuous circle.

Why tracking results is important

As your marketing strategy evolves you need to track your progress to ensure that you are getting the maximum ROI from your internal resource and paid for marketing. I’d recommend a simple dashboard which tracks total audience ​reach, email click throughs, email unsubscribes, social media engagement by channel and conversions for each piece of content or campaign.

Want to learn more in a workshop which provides easy to use marketing tools and pragmatic advice for SME leaders? Then book onto our masterclasses in September or October. Click here