Social media campaigns to help grow your business revenue
[Updated Dec. 2019]
My belief is that revenue generated from social media alone will increase dramatically in the next two – three years. (I first wrote this in 2013) … six years later, I can say I wasn’t far or wrong really. Without being pretentious this was pretty obvious!
Later on, you’ll be able to check some crazy stats from our friends at Hootsuite. Keep reading.
Let me show you how Social media can help you boost your business revenue. Yes, its happening every minute of the day.
The social media strategy path to promote and increase business revenue
Here is a quick but effective overview on how you can organise yourself to grow your business. Start by:
- Mapping your your fans, audience
- Consult your audience’s mapping journey
- Discover which topics they’re talking about
- Check which platforms they’re using/asking questions
- Create /offer outstanding content to answer their questions
- Get them involved with creative topics
- Engage (no selling) and share tips, freebies or any meaningful stuff
- Be consistent, positive and neutral when needed
- Be yourself
- Keep it simple- stupid (K.i.s.s)
- Find right times to talk, share
- Don’t be shy use social media to increase brand awareness ( 4-6 + times a day)
- …
Are you ready to shake up things a bit and boost your brand image? Good.
Small to medium sized businesses should use social media plan and promotional tactics several times a day. With their people leading the way and embracing the digital age, they cannot fail.
Here is why.
If your company has the budget, you might want to employ someone who specialises in digital communications, and who can champion social media and ultimately get your brand name out there.
How can social media really boost business revenue?
First decide in which way you’ll use the social channels for. The key is based on preparation, planning and daily key terms (promotional, awareness…).
You need to dedicate half to an hour of your time, have a clear and SMART communications strategy and a solid social media plan all managed by your and/or your marketing people. However, sorry to say that, but its not all done yet. You’re half way there.
Start with a basic strategic model and improve it as you go along. Get new ideas from:
- Your main competitor’s (check their feeds)
- Read their press releases
- Blogs
- Surveys
- Check keywords at Google Trends
- Scan the Web for interesting new content – set-up Google alerts.
Get to know what is happening out there by browsing some facts and figures.
Do they make you think differently ? What are you waiting for then?
Create an effective social media strategy (under one l hour)
1) Define the purpose of your social media campaign (from marketing /content plan)
2) Define your campaign’s ultimate mission ( visit or revise it and get approval)
3) Set action plan for Q1, Q2 … ( set short but realistic targets)
4) Create your own metrics (dashboards, KPI’s…)
5) Increase brand awareness – (approach in Instagram, Fb, Twitter…)
6) Control your metrics (Analytics, social media data..)
Next, if you’re a medium sized company you can determine:
Which department/campaigns you’ll prioritise. Then check what’s working and not working, create your SWOT to monitor the ongoing process and measure it – there’s no point in using social media if you’re not prepared to measure it’s success – while revising it – in order to update or build that into a new plan.
Customer mapping and/or buying funnel:
Whatever services/products you are providing, you’ll have to offer a great value.
This can be something that is relevant to them, solve a problem or educate them. You’ll have to really engage with your customers, ask them what they think about your brand by sending quick surveys, so you can learn and improve from it.
Read more: Learn about customer journey mapping
What role can your business offer/play in short to medium term? List and share it.
The answer lays within your goals, e.g: improve customer service satisfaction; offer new web self-service, etc. You’ll have to constantly follow and adapt to new trends, keep measuring and align it with your business goals as you go along..
As promised, here are some hot stats for you to validate how powerful social media networks are.
A recent study from Hootsuite tells us that people are spending more time on Instagram and buy more things after reading reviews on these social networking sites.
When promoting your brand make sure you are crystal clear about what you are saying, sharing etc. [check your social media campaign topics]
Do not or ever mislead the prospecting customer
Do not promote like this pub owner did (on Pinterest) – I was searching for Thai food restaurants and this come up.
They advertise ” The Fox Inn #tangley #andover #hampshire amazing #thai #food #pub. … Explore Thai Restaurant, Andover Hampshire and more” See it here:
What do you see in the picture below?
I know, the heading shows city and place selling Thai food, right, and when you click the link – you get a nice looking empty pub with tables and chairs!
Humm.
What is he/she advertising for? Is this a show-room? Or a normall pub? We don’t know..
I am afraid I can’t say its Thai. I can’t see a menu with Thai specials in it. And as far as I am concerned, the image is selling everything but pub food.
They have not, it is not planned, from content to images, therefore misleading. I am guessing they’ve probably lost a few reservations, conversions and bookings on the process. I was ready to book, but I didn’t because it is not very Thai food orientated, just a empty pub show room, really.
Conclusion:
We now know that people of all ages and backgrounds are rapidly engaging through social media, this is happening far quicker than originally predicted, so if you are behaving like our example above you’re waisting money and time.
Marketing and social media managers and/or businesses owners must optimise campaign content more than ever in order to find out if it went viral and not the other way around.
As with anything in marketing, a complete understanding of your target audience, is an absolutely essential starting point.
Your social media department should function like any other key business unit, you must get your ideas into a operational strategic plan, share it with your staff, making a clear scenario for each category you want to promote; then validate phases and implement it with clear KPi’s.
Consider scheduling your weekly campaigns around relevant time zone and/or day times, hashtags and when your audience is more likely to be talking about the topic or an event. Follow these as a basic rule to make your campaign more relevant to your audience, and they will be more likely to engage with and share your content.
Remember, test it for two to three months with social media management tools, so that you get detailed analyses of your campaign (s), the impact generated through online conversation, percentage converted, online comments, reach, shares, etc. and see what’s working for you. Start all over again.
I hope this post can allay any doubts you may have about how social media can is the priority tool within any modern business to help boost its revenue. Share and leave comments.
Social media tools and more information:
- Download our Free social-media-checklist-2015-16
- Download & use Social Media tactical plan
Post updated 28/12/2019
