Using Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
Today, social media platforms have become the primary information and commerce channel, far outperforming other digital platforms. People are gravitating to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to get news, search for products and services, and even make purchasing decisions. Since the beginning of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated social media adoption. Businesses have had to change their whole operational and marketing models to grapple with the drop in in-person sales and the rise in socially-distanced online shopping. So, how can businesses leverage social media to survive and thrive in this challenging business environment?
Here we look at how to adopt social media marketing on various social media platforms to help you connect with new and existing customers.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing uses social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn to build brands, engage target audiences, and increase sales. It involves creating tailored content to create more brand awareness, drive engagement, and increase revenues.
According to Statista, in 2019 and 2020, people’s average time on social media per day worldwide was 145 minutes, up from 142 minutes in 2018. So, especially in this pandemic, businesses cannot afford to ignore social media marketing and must adapt to survive.
How Can You Leverage Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business?
We can all agree that things are changing, and the world is going digital. Statista states that 4.66 billion people were active internet (which includes social media) users in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. That is over 50% of the world’s population!
Here lies an opportunity for your business to flourish. Below we look at the social media strategies you can use to take advantage of this marketing shift.
1. Have a Water-Tight Social Media Strategy
A comprehensive social media strategy for your business can mean the difference between success on various platforms and catastrophic failure.
To have a proper game plan for your brand, start by creating clear goals using the SMART framework. Consider your brand’s needs and strategize on how to meet them.
Ask yourself:
- Do you need social media marketing for brand awareness or to drive sales?
- Do you have various social media strategies to meet potential customers at the different phases of their buying journey, i.e., Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion?
2. Identify Your Target Audience and Tailor Your Marketing to Them
Who is your ideal customer? If you do not know this yet, it will help if you performed in-depth research to find out.
To understand your target customer, consider their:
- Demographics (age, income, gender, location, interests)
- Expectations for your product or service
- Pain points and how you can meet them
- Current purchasing habits
- Brand preferences
If your business is getting low or zero engagement on social media, the audience you are engaging with is not your target market.
3. Create Engaging Content
Content is king, but good content is gold. Content that resonates with your audience can set you apart from competitors and make your customers want to engage with you. Ensure your content stands out, tells a story, and adds value by making it compelling, relevant, and to the point.
4.Use Paid Ads
Paid social media campaigns are a sure way to give your brand or business quick visibility. When you pay for an ad, you are guaranteed to appear in your target user’s feeds. To meet your paid ad goals, ensure your ads resonate with the social media platform you use, your target audience, and their behavior pattern. Unlike traditional marketing tactics, you can measure your social media advertising strategy’s effectiveness and track the ROI with ease.
5.Leverage Retargeting and Lead Nurturing
Once you’ve gained leads from paid and organic reach, the next step is lead nurturing of your targets. You’ll need to make your audience receptive to your brand and earn their trust to get them to make a purchase. However, most people don’t buy on the first contact, so you must also use retargeting campaigns such as Google Ads, Facebook Retargeting, or LinkedIn Ads to bring them back to your site and get them to buy from you.
Pro Tips:
- Different social platforms have different target audiences, so tailor your marketing to those audiences.
- Take advantage of analytic tools such as engagement, reach, hashtag performance, and likes to track your metrics.
- Deploy your social media marketing strategy on multiple platforms, using both organic and paid strategies.
The Coronavirus pandemic has forced many businesses to adapt to a purely online operational and marketing model. Most companies struggled at the beginning of the pandemic. One year later, brands and businesses are regaining their footing and using social media marketing to grow and engage with their clients. Have you incorporated social media marketing in your business yet?
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