SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING – HOW THE NEW ADVERTISEMENT WORKS

Your customers and everyone who wants to become one look for you and your company on the Internet. What is decisive then is what you find there. In addition to the classic search on Google and Co., 95 percent of people used a social network such as Facebook or Youtube last year – and there they also came across companies, products, and services. Ideally, your brand would also appear. If not, we will explain briefly and concisely why and how you can change that with social media marketing.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?

Social media are so named because these Internet platforms essentially rely on the communication of social groups and individuals. People enter into dialogue with one another, write public short messages, and share photos and videos with friends or an audience of millions. This audience of millions is also interesting for companies; social media and networks make it possible to use simple means to display advertising in the context of social media marketing.

However, the platforms offer much more effective tools to reach a wider public. The range of social media marketing is correspondingly complex and requires classification. A comparison with traditional marketing, for example in newspapers or with posters, serves as an aid.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IS DIFFERENT – BUT WHY?

What distinguishes social media marketing from other advertising measures becomes clear when it is compared with classic advertising media. Advertising spaces such as newspapers and magazines, posters and advertisements, or radio and television are considered classic. The basic principle of this classic marketing is to spread a message that is linked to a company or product. At its core is the call to give in to the impulse to buy. Depending on the quality and intention of the advertising measure, the recipient receives this message and processes it individually: buying impulse, emotional charge, or discourse in their environment.

The basis of social media marketing, however, is also the transmission of a message when it comes to marketing in social media. Unlike the platforms from classic marketing, social media offer a communicative feedback channel.

WHAT’S LEFT OF THE MESSAGE

After the advertising message has been recorded, the recipient can also process it by responding in the form of a comment, a message, or a virtual reaction. However, he can also record it himself and distribute it in his environment, thus turning it from the recipient into an advertising medium.

The advertising measure is no longer behind a closed shop window but appears as an interactive area. As a result of this communication, the recipient of the message also spreads it further. As a result, social media marketing as a tool of advertising technology is correspondingly more complex, but at the same time more intensive in its effect, and selected cases are also more effective.

WHAT DOES SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING BRING ME?

Due to the complex communication structure, the biggest criticism of social media marketing is that the reactions of users to the advertising measure do not immediately lead to an impulse to buy. Marketing on social media platforms is particularly suitable for branding and customer care.

The fact that companies worldwide invested almost 100 billion US dollars of their advertising budgets in social media in 2020 alone speaks against any criticism. Despite the elaborate planning, the positive effects of social media marketing predominate.

INTERACTIVE AND SOCIAL

When implementing advertising measures, companies rely on interaction and customer loyalty. Instead of just being the recipient of the message, potential customers become fans and carry the advertising message independently, interacting, communicating, and participating in the social media campaign. At the same time, the recipients carry the message into their environment, and discuss and recommend brands and products, for example within their circle of friends.

Social media marketing thus becomes digital recommendation marketing. Platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, or Instagram provide you with usable data and information in real-time about which people and groups of people see the social media campaign and how they interact with it. As the author, you can see directly whether your advertising leads people to visit a website, buy a product or communicate positively about a brand. It is also possible to intervene directly and immediately and to control and adapt the content.

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WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS AND PLATFORMS?

Social media thrive on their channels and platforms. Well-known social networks are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, but also chat programs such as WhatsApp or Telegram. These social media platforms differ essentially in the way the content is uploaded and consumed there.

As a result, also from the target group that uses it. While a platform like Facebook distributes almost any form of content – text, image, and video – YouTube, for example, focuses purely on video content. To be active on these platforms as a private person or brand, you need an account, a channel, or a page.

MIRACLE WEAPON FACEBOOK

From here, content is centrally uploaded and distributed. Also due to the diverse content on different topics, Facebook, in particular, is popular and effective as a platform to start with, to build up a large reach as quickly as possible. There is also broad demography in the cross-section of society.

The main social networks are

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Twitter
• Snapchat

Platforms such as YouTube or TikTok, on the other hand, either require a lot of effort and maintenance (YouTube) or only reach a very specific target group.

THE CHALLENGE IN ONLINE MARKETING

Social networks regulate and control the distribution of content with great technical effort. In particular, advertising content is monitored and checked. Part of successful online marketing, in addition to the prior definition of a goal, is therefore also the precise planning of content to get around these technical restrictions in the best possible way.

With a prepared selection of content, a wide range of your advertising message can be generated organically, i.e. without advertising investments within the social networks. In addition, platforms such as Facebook offer tools to control and expand the distribution of content within the channels with advertising budgets.

Advantage: target groups that you have previously defined can be addressed individually. In addition, advertisers receive usable numbers and data during the campaign in real time.

IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FOR ME?

Millions of customers and target groups in many companies are already using social networks. Social media marketing is suitable as a component of effective online marketing for every brand, every industry, and every product. This is always based on the definition of an advertising goal.

The question of what and, above all, who is to be achieved, determines the appropriate measures, the content, and the formats that will be used in social media from now on. It is statistically confirmed that the users of the social networks and thus also your target group are looking for you there. You must be found there – in the way you want it to be.

GOOD PARTNERS BY THE SIDE

In contrast to traditional media, the control of this external presentation in social media is entirely up to you. A regular and frequent presentation of your company with changing forms and activities is crucial. Nevertheless, you can look for support in the form of agencies and consultants who will work with you to answer the question of the advertising objective and suitable measures. Because in social media marketing it is also important to pay attention to details such as a language that is optimized for search engines or the avoidance of duplicate content.

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING WORKS

As with every advertising measure, a company must formulate appropriate goals in advance, which it would like to achieve with social media marketing in this case. Knowing how a social media platform works and above all how your potential customers use it helps to use social media marketing as an effective tool.

It is possible through a campaign on social media

• Increase the number of clicks on your platforms, e.g. website or shop
• Optimize the conversion rate by turning platform visitors into customers.
• to increase the awareness of a brand or a product
• enter into dialogue with customers and the target group, collect feedback and disseminate information
• Charge a brand’s identity with positive emotions

Anyone who advertises on social media always does so using multimedia. Unlike traditional platforms such as newspapers, TV, or posters, social media marketing relies on a mixture of texts, images, videos, and, in the meantime, pure audio. This means that all formats can be found in one place that was previously to be found in different places. The combination of several media formats such as video, text, and images is also possible, popular, and successful.

HOW DO I ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

Concrete examples of successful online marketing within social networks are short videos that introduce a product or show how it is manufactured. Posts on Facebook call with meaningful and self-made pictures to give feedback or to share your ideas about the use of the product with the community. Short video clips and photos from everyday internal company life often create a special closeness between brand and customer. The recipients of the advertising message are consistently encouraged and called upon to participate and discuss.

Since the focus in social media, and thus also in social media marketing, is togetherness, a successful strategy also depends on these mechanisms. Ideally, you always tell a story through your communication on platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. This can be a use case of your product, the positive effect of your brand, or the (intermediate) result of your work. Avoid long texts or a language that is very specific or aimed specifically at experts.

THE APPROPRIATE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

This content does not always appear professionally produced, but rather recorded on a mobile phone and discussed spontaneously, for example. Photos also act as snapshots “from the situation”. Depending on your own goals within the social media campaign, this is even expressly desired to create the impression that you are personally responsible for the content and that you have not involved a professional production company. Numerous forms of representation developed in the process.

With a targeted message and defined topics, customers and their target group can be called on to publish their photos or videos about the brand or a product on their platforms and to refer to them. In this way, the customer becomes an advertising medium in social media, while at the same time identifying personally with brands and products.

HOW TO MEASURE SUCCESS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

KEY FIGURES AND EVALUATION

When evaluating success in social media marketing, the previously defined goal is decisive. If you want to increase the sales of a product, you will notice the success in the sales figures. If you want to increase the awareness of a brand or create a positive image, social media provide you with key figures that you can then interpret correctly.

You achieve a high reach with your measures by continuously increasing the number of followers, for example on the Facebook page. High values ​​for likes or shares indicate that customers and fans have a positive attitude towards your brand (like) and like to share this emotion with their network (share). In addition, platforms such as Google, Facebook, or Youtube provide you with detailed figures on how many people see your brand, how many minutes a video was viewed, or how often a link was clicked.

WHAT DOES SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING COST?

Anyone who uses social networks for advertising measures can use a defined budget effectively in various places. Formulating an advertising goal will help set that budget.

Costs arise, for example, when creating suitable content such as texts, images, and videos. An agency supports you with important questions and advises you on the implementation of your social media marketing. In the end, platforms such as Google, Facebook, or Youtube can be brought to a greater reach by spreading their own social media strategy with an advertising budget.

Both cost items are individually scalable, so no specific figures can be given in advance. Platforms such as Facebook, for example, provide a forecast of how many people can theoretically be reached with the advertising content per euro spent.

KEEP IN CONTROL

This is why social media marketing offers a cost advantage, as you can control the distribution of the advertising budget for your company yourself. In contrast to traditional marketing, intermediate steps and costly intermediaries are avoided.

You retain complete control over the budget, the measure, and the controllable effect of the advertising campaign from start to finish. At the same time, you increase the visibility of brands and products, create closeness to customers, and benefit from the fact that your target group dynamically carries the advertising message into their social environment. You can only achieve these effects with social media marketing. We advise and accompany you on further questions about social media marketing.