BUS502: Strategic Marketing

Digital marketing strategy plays a critical role in business growth. With the right strategy, you can raise brand awareness, attract the target audience, and build lasting relationships for a win-win situation. However, your marketing efforts can prove fruitful only if you understand how to use social platforms to your advantage.

Social media has become a part of our lives. Successful marketers put themselves in customers' shoes and choose a strategy that focuses on their pain points. If you want to increase the efficacy of your digital marketing campaigns, you need to learn about popular social media websites.

While a myriad of social media websites is available these days, you can't promote your brand on each and every website. By focusing your efforts on websites that are popular among your audience, you can drive results.

Why Do You Want One to Win Or Lose?

Myspace got the first-mover advantage and remained the leading social website for quite some time. However, when Facebook was introduced, it captured a huge market share in no time and left other social media websites struggling with their loss.

When an innovative company is launched with the right strategy, it has a good chance of eliminating the predecessor and becoming the market leader. In the past, we have seen many such examples. Netflix beat Blockbuster, digital camera companies killed Polaroid, and Circuit City lost to Best Buy.

This is a common trend that old and established businesses lose to new market entrants. It is because many traditional stores prefer to stick with the strategies and actions they have been using for years and fear change or innovation.

This practice isn't good for anyone; neither marketers nor consumers. If there is no market competition, consumers would suffer the most.

Higher competition eliminates the monopoly. The more firms in the market, the more efforts would be needed for a business to make its place in the crowded market. They are motivated to innovate and offer value to consumers to stand out. It keeps them on toes and they constantly put in their best efforts to stay ahead and stay relevant. Similarly, they are also inclined to offer better quality goods and services at reasonable prices.

Now, let's consider the example of social media in this scenario. It's best for everyone that the competition is increasing amongst social media companies. The more the competition, the higher will be the service quality at lower rates. So, whether you use the internet for personal networking or you are a business marketer, this competition will benefit you in the long run.

How Do We Benefit From Each Network?

Investing time and money in social media is no longer optional for business marketers. With your competition gaining customers and building a good reputation via social websites, you can't afford to miss out on this invaluable opportunity.

As marketers, your first step should be to get a website where you can display products, testimonials, and other relevant information. After that, you can gain several benefits from social accounts.

Regardless of which platform you choose, you can raise awareness via social posts as well as paid social media advertising. Your social posts should include a CTA that guides users about the next action. For instance, if you post a special discount for your social media followers, you ought to add the link to the online store where they can redeem it.

Customers tend to trust businesses that have a transparent system. Not only should you share detailed information about your business, but also share accurate pricing and terms and conditions. With this approach, you can earn their trust.

Many customers post reviews about their experiences with a brand. When a satisfied customer posts a positive comment, you should respond to them. However, it's equally important to respond to negative comments. When you take action quickly to solve their problems, your popularity and sales are likely to elevate.

What's Hot Right Now?

Being a marketer, you should be well-aware of current market trends. It will help you stay relevant and update your marketing strategy accordingly to reach your audience. On the other hand, if you don't know which social media marketing channels are the most popular, you may lose customer attention before you know it.

With people confined to home due to COVID, the use of the internet, especially social media has significantly increased. A majority of people interact with their friends and families via social media. The use of digital media and social platforms for business purposes has also become the norm. So, you need to know which platforms are hot these days and which ones are losing popularity.

The trends for 2020 are out now and marketers can develop a strategy for 2021 based on these statistics. Here is a list of top social websites along with the number of active users on these sites.

• Facebook – 2,701 million
• YouTube – 2,000 million
• WhatsApp – Facebook – 2,000 million
• Facebook Messenger – 1,300 million
• WeChat – 1,206 million
• Instagram – 1,158 million
• TikTok – 689 million
  

If you don't currently use the aforementioned sites for marketing purposes, it's time to go through your social marketing strategy again and revise the strategy to adjust to these trends.

Let's Explore

Whether you are promoting a new business or working with a business that has been in the industry for a long time, you need an effective marketing strategy for social channels.

In social marketing, there are no rules and standards. You can't follow specific rules that guarantee to meet objectives. The best way to succeed in the social media world is to adopt the trial and error technique. You should come up with a plan to promote the brand and execute it on social channels of your choice. If it brings you the desired results, then it's great! But there is a good chance that social marketing efforts won't always prove effective.

Despite your efforts to boost awareness, gain customers, or generate leads, your social strategy won't always work. This is why it's important to have a contingency plan. If the first plan doesn't get results, you should adjust it based on the performance metrics.

The good thing is that there are several options available for marketers. If Facebook doesn't work, you may turn to LinkedIn for the next campaign. You should set clear objectives, choose the right platform that meets your criteria, and measure performance after the execution of the social marketing plan for making your social marketing campaigns fruitful.

Source: Cheryl Lawson, https://open.library.okstate.edu/introtosocialmedia/chapter/what-network-is-on-now/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.