Startups
Distinctive Features of Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing You Should Know
June 15, 2022
July 29, 2021
Social media is a huge part of our daily lives, whether we like it or not. A study by Global WebIndex shows that over half of the global population have social media accounts, and over 70% of the UK population are active social media users.
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve been spending even more time on social media, which is unsurprising due to the amount of time we’ve been spending indoors. Research from eMarketer found that Americans spent 7 more minutes a day on social media in 2020 compared to 2019, reaching a grand total of 82 minutes.
With these statistics in mind, it is clear that social media marketing is a vital digital marketing tactic, and one that’ll only continue to grow with possibility as time goes on. In this article, we’ll be discussing the what, how and why of social media marketing so that you can transform your approach to digital marketing and harness the power of social media.
First of all, let’s discuss what social media marketing actually is. In our open step by RMIT, it’s described as a collection of applications, platforms and websites in an online community that allows the creation and sharing of content, information and contacts. In more simple terms, it’s the use of social media platforms to drive traffic to your website.
There is a wide range of social media tools that are used within the field, from forums and blogs to social networks and wikis. The primary role of those who work in social media marketing is to organise and run marketing campaigns over social media platforms through publishing content, engaging with followers, and checking social media analytics to analyse success; as well as running social media advertisements.
Social media marketing can be a very broad role, given the amount of social media platforms that are out there. Each social media platform works differently and appeals to different kinds of content and different target audiences, so your social media marketing strategy must consider this. Here, we give a rundown of some of the main platforms and how to use them, with some advice taken from RMIT’s social media tips and tricks open step.
Having a Facebook page is one of the best free ways to use social media marketing. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users, it is the most popular social media platform out there, making it a must for any social media marketing strategy.
That’s not the only thing Facebook has to offer, however. As well as being able to create a Facebook business page to help develop a brand identity, companies can also use Facebook advertisements to bring more people to their page, create promoted posts, and use Facebook for a range of other marketing tactics.
People of all ages use Facebook, making it the ideal place to target different audiences. However, the largest demographic of users are between ages 25 and 35. As of 2021, 56% of users are male, making it a pretty even split between men and women.
Another very popular social media network is Instagram, which is another great place to advertise your company. Oberlo estimates that 71% of US businesses are currently on Instagram, demonstrating how popular and successful it is as part of a marketing strategy.
Many companies use Instagram as a kind of catalogue of their products, where they share images that fit their brand aesthetic, as well as sharing photos from their customers using their products – this is called ‘user-generated content. Alternatively, companies can use Instagram to raise awareness about their brand, hold competitions that gain more followers, and create sponsored posts.
Whether you want to create a fun brand narrative on Instagram stories, partner with an influencer to target a particular audience with your products, or spread your brand’s message, Instagram has a great range of features and tools that can help you.
You might be surprised to learn that YouTube actually has more active monthly users than Instagram, making it a fantastic place to gain supporters. Although Instagram is a much better place to advertise your brand using images and short-form content, YouTube could be a great option if you’re creating longer videos.
Other than making videos on a Youtube channel, companies can pay to advertise through YouTube and use influencer marketing strategies. It’s very common for influencers to create sponsored videos where they use or talk about a certain brand in their videos, so this can be a great opportunity to target a specific demographic.
YouTube advertising is managed through Google. To create a campaign for YouTube, you will need to set up a Google AdWords account.
As we discussed at the beginning of the article, over 50% of the world’s population use social media platforms. What’s more, they spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes a day on them. These figures mean that using social media as part of your digital marketing strategy allows you to target an enormous audience with relative ease. By failing to be active on social media, you could be missing out on thousands of supporters.
One example of the effectiveness of social media is when Vodafone created a new product line to attract an audience of age 16-24. In our open step about social media investment, the Institute of Data and Marketing states that when Vodafone invested in influencer marketing, their content was viewed over 31 million times on social media, and they went from 0% to 31% awareness from their target audience.
There are many benefits of social media marketing, but its primary purpose is to drive brand awareness and traffic to your website. This ultimately leads to more followers, more customers and more business success. However, there are some other benefits of social media marketing worth mentioning, which we’ll detail below.
Social media marketing lets businesses:
There is a lot to learn in the world of social media marketing, and there are many perspectives to consider. To break it down for you, we’ll be discussing what a social media marketing strategy is, how to create a strategy, planning your content, and how to engage followers.
It’s one thing to create a few social media accounts, but if you really want to take your business to the next level, you need a social media marketing strategy. This will be your master plan for your social media content, including your content guidelines, what kind of content to post, marketing campaigns, and how to engage with your audience.
There are a few things you will need to consider before you start working on your social media marketing strategy. IDM provided some tips on their open step about creating a campaign strategy, and many of these are relevant to creating an overall strategy. These tips include:
It’s important to think about how your content will inspire, incentivise or motivate your followers to become customers, where they buy your products or services. They suggest that there are three main things to think about when it comes to engaging followers:
A lot of work can go into planning your social media content, but our open step from the University of Leeds has some great tips to help you out. They suggest that there are 6 main things to include in your plan:
We’ll finish off with some extra top tips to consider when posting content on social media as part of your marketing strategy. These include:
Social media marketing is one of the most essential tools in any marketing strategy, and is at the forefront of any digital marketing campaign. With such a high number of people on social media at any one time, knowing how to structure a social media marketing campaign has never been more important.
So if you’re looking for a greater audience reach with a much higher possibility of conversions, then a social media marketing campaign is one of the best ways you can do this.
Source: CNBC
Image Source: Twenty20