Leveraging the Marketing Potential of Social Media

According to Statista, a staggering 3 billion people are now on social media, and a report by GlobalWebIndex found that 54% of these users rely on social media to research products. On top of this, with the world currently in the grip of a global pandemic, people are spending much more time online, which is hastening digital transformation across the board. As such, social media may seem like a great way to market your brand, but how can businesses best leverage the potential it offers? Hootsuite suggests that your strategy should be focused on achieving meaningful, clear, realistic, and measurable objectives, and it should be ultimately aimed at generating leads and sales, but how exactly do you go about accomplishing this?

According to sproutsocial, one of the best ways to grow you audience is making sure you engage your current followers. In sproutsocial's words, "your customers can be your best cheerleaders." This is as true offline as it is on, but WOM can disseminate far more rapidly in the digital realm through social media channels, esp. when your ads go viral. Nevertheless, whether offline or on, delivering positive experiences to your existing customer base is a must, as it engenders loyalty and can lead to customers advocating for your brand. But in order to do this effectively, it's critical to know your target audience inside out. Social media analytic tools such as those offered by sproutsocial and Hootsuite can help you achieve this, but only if you know what to look for.

Hootsuite suggests that some of the key attributes you should identify are age, location, average income, typical job title, industry, and interests. This is all valuable data, and also having access to customers' browsing and purchase history can yield invaluable insights into trends and your customers' personas. In fact, learning as much as possible about your buyers' personas will enable you to fine-tune your marketing strategy and help you come up with creative ways to grab their attention and create positive and engaging experiences. By better understanding your target audience, you also will be better positioned to select which social media platforms to focus in on based on their particular demographics.

Source: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics

Armed with this information, you can better reach your target audience and craft content that will create engaging experiences for them, enhancing your brand perception, and growing your online following. While data analytics can help guide your marketing strategy, the key to success in marketing is, as always, delivering positive and pain-free experiences and coming up with creative ways to grab your customers' attention in a way that aligns with and strengthens your brand image. And with the rise of social media and the accelerated digital transformation ushered in by the pandemic, making creative use of social media platforms to market your brand may be more crucial than ever.

This blog post was last edited on the 23rd of September, 2020. Some typos were corrected, and a link and image were added.