How to Plan Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
By Steven Czyrny
Is your social media marketing campaign unable to achieve the results you want?
It takes a lot of work to pull this off. In fact, 78% of companies are now devoting full teams to these campaigns.
If you’ve got a good team, or, even if you are working solo, keep reading to find out how to achieve the best results.
Identify Your Goals
The first step is to analyze your company’s needs and determine how social media can contribute to them.
Keep in mind, the goals you set will be meaningless if they don’t increase brand awareness, retain customers, and reduce marketing costs. Your campaign will fail without these goals being met.
Ideally, you will want two primary goals and two secondary goals. It keeps your focus strictly on the most vital components without distracting you with too many.
Set Objectives
The goals you set won’t help you if your overall objectives are vague. If you want to generate leads and sales, determine exact numbers. Find out what specific, tangible goal could be defined as a marketing success.
When in doubt, use the SMART tools: ensure your objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This will help better define your goals, allowing you to set realistic objectives.
Research the Competition
This crucial step will determine what works and what doesn’t for your competition. Learn from their mistakes so that your campaign can be better.
If you’re unsure what exactly to analyze, look at what topics they cover and what content they create. Determine which of their posts gets the most attention and the most results.
Time of day is another important factor. Look through their post history and see if they have a set posting schedule.
Understanding areas where your competition failed will give your campaign a high advantage against them.
Set a Budget
When determining any budget, consider what you want to do. Determine exactly what it will take to achieve your goals and objectives.
Make a list of all the tools you will need, services you will use, and advertising you will purchase. By each entry, put a cost estimate. This will give you a bird’s-eye view of your potential costs.
Some companies establish a defined budget ahead of time and choose tactics that fit it. Others establish a strategy first, then determine a budget that fits. You will need to research and determine what works best for your business.
Analyze Your Performance
Even after your campaign has successfully launched, you have to maintain it. Set a schedule to regularly analyze the successes and failures of your campaign.
Evaluate your findings and keep them on-hand. It allows you to identify what worked and where to focus your efforts for constant improvement.
Further Study
Consider the successful social media campaigns other companies conducted. Dacia, for example, used Facebook to achieve the goal of generating leads and creating brand awareness.
They used Facebook’s boosted posts for ads related to their newest models. With accumulated data from previous research and experiments, Dacia optimized the ad’s impact based on where in the buying cycle customers were.
Get Out There and Market
In this short guide, we’ve outlined some of the basic principles of achieving success in a social media marketing campaign. However, your ultimate win comes from advanced research into your market.
Now that you’ve got a better understanding of what it takes, get out there and do it. Your campaign won’t run itself.
Need more help with lead generation? Check out our 5-step guide for small business tips.
For other questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to contact us anytime.