Social media marketing is an important aspect of building your brand.  88% of people browsing their phones are on social media. The right social media advertising strategy can help you increase the number of people who interact with your brand and engage those who are already paying attention. Social media is a powerful tool for reaching both of these goals, but breaking into social media marketing should always start with your ideal channels and branch out slowly as your campaign develops.

Through social media, you can reach your audiences where they like to relax and connect with brands, and you can show off your brand personality while raising visibility and awareness.

Define Your Social Media Marketing Goals

First, define what you want to get out of social media marketing. Your goals can determine which platform is likely to offer the best results. For example, visual and infinite-scroll channels are best to just raise brand awareness, where more talkative channels are necessary to increase community engagement. Some channels are better for sales and conversions, while others are better for audience-building.

Defining your goals can help you build a strategy that is likely to see the returns you are aiming for. From there, you can choose the channels and marketing solutions that will guide you toward success.

Follow Your Audience to Their Social Media Channels

Find your audience. Use market research to identify your current and target customer audience and discover where they like to hang out online and on their phones. Are “your people” a Twitter crowd, a Facebook crowd, Instagram enthusiasts, or a specific blend?

You can use many different methods to find specific audience members, audience-matching, demographic targeting, or choose platforms that have a strong association with your industry.

Define Your Marketing Budget

Social media marketing is often touted as free, but there is always a marketing budget to consider. Time and asset creation come with their own expense, and it’s important not to needlessly block yourself out from the benefits of paid social media marketing tools. By defining your budget, you can make the most of your campaign, splitting effort between free broadcast channels, sponsored visibility, and asset creation.

Find Your Voice and Favourite Content Types

Your brand’s content style can also determine the right social media network for your marketing campaign. Highly visual campaigns will do well on Instagram and Pinterest. Wordy or discussion-based content will get more traction on Facebook. For catchy one-liners, Twitter has always been the place. Work with your marketing team to identify the best ways to translate your brand voice into your target social media channels and campaign ideas.

The Best Social Media Channels for Retail Marketing

Among the dozens of social media networks, apps, platforms, and communities you could target, there are a few that remain the best for initial social media marketing. These platforms have large and widespread audiences, easy to use interfaces, and most also have an integrated paid marketing system when you’re ready to step up from free campaign styles.

Facebook

Aging with its audience, Facebook has been the primary platform for Millennials who are now between 25 and 40. Facebook is also an ideal platform to reach community groups and local groups of all types. It supports wordy content and long discussion threads.

YouTube

YouTube is great if you like making videos, big or small. Developing your own YouTube channel and video series(es) can be a great way to connect with an interactive and engaged audience. However, it can be tough to get new viewers through YouTube alone. YouTube is often used as an ancillary to a primary social media network where it is easier to gain visibility with large crowds.

Instagram & Pinterest

For highly visual industries like interior design, photography, or visual art, Instagram and Pinterest are great platforms. Instagram is trendy and you can tell Stories, so any highly visual brand targeting the younger generations can thrive. Pinterest has a much broader age group targeting and can appeal to anyone who likes to shop visually, including a large crafts and DIY audience.

Twitter / X

Twitter, now “X” is the quick quip platform where witty one-liners and eye-catching graphics are the favoured style. Communities are more dynamic and many users follow brands on Twitter for entertainment purposes – and sometimes customer service. However, since it was bought and renamed, it’s unclear if Twitter/X will stay on top.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a good secondary social media marketing platform for B2B brands targeting both other businesses and professional clients. It is more formal and you may catch the best traction with thoughtful LinkedIn articles related to your industry instead of quips and graphics.

Do Competitor Research

It can also be helpful to do competitor research. Which networks are getting the best results for brands like yours? Where does your industry thrive, and where do customers in desirable market shares interact with similar brands? Competitor research can give you valuable insights into both network selection and social media marketing strategies that work.

Keep It Simple, At First

Remember to keep it simple. Choose just one or two social media networks when starting your campaign. Carefully tailor your content to the styles and effective strategies for the channels you select, and practice making marketing assets that translate well between your two starting platforms. From there, you can start collecting data and building an ever-more-effective social media advertising strategy that may eventually grow to more networks.

Automate Your Campaigns

Once you have mastered your social media channels and built successful campaigns, get to automating. You can line up weeks and months of content through a scheduler and use helpful tools to make sure your content stays fresh and available even as your team turns your focus to other marketing aspects. Contact us today to learn more about bringing your social media advertising strategy to life.

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