Companies and brands can take a range of different methods in order to improve their strategy to attract customers, expand their market and promote their products. Social media marketing has proven to be successful in engaging with consumers and cost-effective for the companies. Therefore, progressively customers have recognized their power over brands (Matt, 2010).
For an effective social media marketing strategy, companies need to include several other tactics. Nowadays, most businesses used social media to benefit from a strong relationship with their customers and improve their brand experience (Coursaris & Van Osch, 2016). Indeed, it has been stated that 91% of brands are using not only one social media platform, but a few of them (Karan P. 2016). Among those, the most well-known are Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Let’s suppose that your strategy as a cosmetic brand is to ensure brand recall? First, it is crucial to keep in mind that on a social media platform, everyone is connected to each other and information is shared directly. According to Stelzner (2016), marketers develop loyalty in their customers and gain marketplace intelligence thanks to social media.
You must identify your “buyer personas” which represent your ideal customers (Karan, 2016). It is important to start by focusing on different groups of customers and list down their demographics such as gender, location, age range, interests, values or hobbies. Indeed the authors Lipsman et al (2012) stated that some platforms may have different demographic and behavioral profiles than typical brand purchasers which involves different approaches to social marketing strategies. For example, if I have to briefly determine The Body Shop’s groups:
- Group 1: Teenagers, females, Europe and USA, great interest in affordable cosmetic products.
- Group 2: 20-30 years old, females, focused on quality-price, share similar value as the brand (animal cruelty free).
- Group 3: Adults, both genders, share the brand’s values, occasionally purchase for special occasions such as Christmas or birthdays.
- Group 4: Adults, highly involved in social and ethic campaigns, organic natural products and create their own homemade products.
Additionnally, when identifiying your groups of consumers, you may as well identify celebrities or influencers which could become a guide for further ideal customers (Neti, 2011).
On a social platform such as Twitter, when posting daily funny comments, it creates a positive reaction to the customers. But most importantly, a business needs to identify what are the platforms used from their different groups of customers (Karan, 2016). If I imagine being the brand manager of The Body Shop, I would most likely find out that group 1 and 2 are using most of the popular platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and lately Snapchat too. But again, assumptions are not sufficient to succeed, in this case surveys and questionnaires might help.
Then, remember that a company’s content can’t fit all of the platforms (Karan, 2016). If the business might have educational content to share, the best channel will probably be LinkedIn or Twitter. On the other hand, if the content is meant to be humoristic and watched, it might be published on Facebook or Instagram. By doing so, some of your followers and customers might like your content and be indirectly encouraged to share it with their friends.
I believe this following step is the most important to succeed in the social media environment: Daily Online Posts. As Karan (2016) mentioned, its important to share your content on a regular basis in order to keep your followers. But daily posts do not mean new content, it can be a recycled content that would still catch customers’ attention based on its past performance.
Finally, to make sure your social media strategy is effective, you should measure your outcomes through websites dedicated to help businesses: Google Analytics (Karan, 2016) or Brandwatch.
Robinson (2013) points out some risks associated to SMM. First is by being present in those social platforms, you create a public relations crisis which can be done by revealing false or confidential information. When posting something fun, be aware to consider everyone’s values and beliefs in order to avoid offending your audience. Everyting that you post is online, which means public, which means accessible to your competitiors. And SMM is more effective when used along with other strategies (Neti, 2011).
REFERENCES
Coursaris C.K. & Van Osch W. (2016) Disentangling the driver of brand benefits – Evidence from social media marketing of two cosmetics companies [online] Available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7551939 Publisher: IEEE, Telecommunications and multimedia (TEMU)
Karan P. (2016) What, Why and How of Social Media Marketing Strategy [online] Available at: https://www.thesmarketers.com/social-media-marketing-strategy/ [Accessed April 6th 2018]
Lipsman A., Mudd G., Rich M. & Bruich S. (2012) The power of “like” – How brands reach (and influence) fans through social-media marketing. Publisher: Journal of Advertising Research
Matt R (2010) Social Media Etiquette: a guide and checklist to the benefits and perils of social marketing [online] Vol. 17, Issue 3-4, pp. 257-261, Publisher: Journal of database marketing and customer strategy management.
Neti S. (2011) Social Media and its role in marketing. Vol. 1, Issue 2, Publisher: International Journal of Enterprise Computing and Business Systems.
Robinson C. (2013) The risks associated with Social Media Marketing. [online] Available at: https://blog.tailwindapp.com/risks-of-social-media-marketing/ [Accessed April 8th 2018]
Stelzner M.A. (2016) 2016 Social Media Marketing Industry Report – How marketers are using social media to grow their businesses. Published: SocialMedia Examiner
