Learn How To Boost Your Revenue

Define Your Goal
Why are you running a campaign on social media? Your marketing team may be initiating a campaign across multiple mediums (Google ads, email, social media, etc.). Or it may be a campaign designated solely for a target audience on social media. Either way, it should be designed to achieve an objective(s) that contributes to one of your brand’s overall marketing goals.

Social media marketing used to be a “Wild West” when it came to measuring performance, let alone ROI. But with access to a variety of platform analytics, tracking software tools, and careful planning, evaluating social media initiatives is much easier now.

Decide what you want your campaign to achieve before you make any plans, create assets, or execute tactics. A few common objective examples are:

• Brand Awareness/Reach – grow your brand’s presence among your target audience on social media while also sending people to your website.
• Engagement – engagement on your social media content encourages a connection between your brand and users, and greatly benefits your page ranking.
• Leads – secure new leads by driving users to a conversion point on your website or through lead form ads right in the social media platform.
• Sales Conversions – drive the target audience to your website to convert them to sales or leverage social media ecommerce tools to enable purchase right in the platforms.
• Promotion/Offers – run a product/service promotion or special offer through social media advertising.

Once your campaign objective/goal is determined, you can determine the type of creative or content assets that need to be developed, and which tools you will need in order to develop them.

Trace the Path to Conversion
When planning a campaign, it can be easy to forget to look beyond the task at hand and consider the whole marketing strategy, including how each tactic affects the other. Unless you are making sales conversions within the social media platform, your target audience’s journey rarely begins and ends there. Social media users’ path to conversion will most likely transcend multiple marketing touchpoints, at the very least your website.

For example, you may launch your brand campaign through a series of LinkedIn posts that communicate your latest and greatest with sharp copy and eye-catching imagery. Your target audience will see it, like it, share it or click it – but then what?

When it comes to user behavior, you can never assume your audience will magically take the path or click where you want them to go. Spell it out for them – above the fold! When sending social media traffic to your website, make sure users can see and take the next step in the funnel upon arrival, including but not limited to:

• Contact you
• Make a purchase
• Download resources
• Read your blog

If you don’t think beyond the social media touchpoint, you could end up spending a lot of time, effort and money driving people to your website only to lose them again because you did not have proper calls to action (CTAs) to convert them.

Use What Works
It can be tempting to create shiny, new messaging and creative for your social media campaign, but if your existing content is attracting and engaging audience members, don’t stray too far from the path.

When working with your team or agency to create campaign content, make sure it features the best attributes from the social media posts that historically perform best on your pages. You can use that as a foundation to create amplified versions that promote your campaign.

Know Your Audience
Beyond knowing what type of content your audience is looking for, it’s important to understand their typical engagement behavior. If you’re looking for your audience to take an action, make sure it’s a realistic one.

It’s become second nature for social media users to fill out forms or download resources, but there are still subsets of people who will only do the bare minimum no matter what you offer them. Not every social media user is an active “sharer,” in fact there are many who passively browse content without posting their own photos, comments, etc.

If your target audience consists of more passive social media users, they likely will like or click on posts, but rarely share or comment on anything. In this case, you’ll want to create a campaign that does not require too many actions before they receive their “carrot” or convert.

If you ask too much of your audience, especially without an equal incentive, your campaign will not perform well. Again, trace that path to conversion to be sure your audience’s journey is user-friendly and effective.