It’s hard for Millennials – the generation raised on social media – to imagine a seasoned marketer intimidated by mediums like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. A marketing medium that evolves by the day, social media presents traditional marketers with new technologies and a whole new set of challenges. For the young professional, these technologies and challenges are not new but normal.
Most businesses leave social media marketing to younger professionals and in some cases, even use younger staff to educate higher powers through reverse mentoring. You might be eager to save social media marketing for the young bucks but before you do, consider how the basics of traditional marketing apply to modern social media.
1. Identify your target market.
It’s the first topic discussed in every book ever written about marketing: Deliver the right message for the right audience at the right time. This golden rule of marketing is just as relevant in today’s social media landscape as it has always been.
Same Questions, Different Approach
Traditional marketers and modern social media marketers alike identify target markets with the same set of questions:
- What are customers saying about the product or service?
- How do customers use the product or service?
- What kind of product or service do customers want?
While the questions are the same, the approach to answering them is different.
Traditional marketers blend quantitative and qualitative research to understand target markets, while modern social media marketers “listen” to the social web.
Listening to the Social Web
The social web provides endless information about existing customers that marketers can use to increase the relevancy of their messaging. Social conversation monitoring tools help marketers identify key insights into who to reach, how to reach them and the right messaging to use. Social media monitoring tools help traditional marketers measure:
- Reach: the number of fans, followers, blog subscribers and other statistics.
- Engagement: retweets, comments, average time on site, bounce rate, clicks, video views, white paper downloads and more.
- Competitive data: the brand’s “share of voice” across the web or number of competitors’ brand mentions.
- Sentiment: the number of mentions with positive or negative sentiment.
- Sales conversions: social media referral traffic to key areas of the sales funnel.
2. Create relevant messaging.
Traditional marketers are no strangers to creating relevant messaging – and neither are modern social media marketers. The strategy is the same. Only the approach is different.
For a traditional marketer, the process to develop relevant messaging can be long and intensive. The creative development cycle tends to be much faster in social media marketing.
Social media marketers can quickly and easily find the right messaging via trending topics and hashtags. The quintessential example of creating relevant messaging on social media belongs to classic cookie company Oreo during the 2013 Super Bowl.
Lights Out, Relevant Messaging On
When the lights went out at the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo jumped at the chance to tweet, “You can still dunk in the dark.” The now famous “blackout tweet” earned the cookie company nearly 16,000 retweets, proving that a traditional marketing technique as basic as creating relevant messaging can reach a target audience across the social web.
3. Measure your campaign results.
Campaign measurement is a cornerstone of success for all marketing – from the traditional to the modern. The only difference between measuring campaign results in traditional marketing and measuring it in social media marketing is the approach.
Traditional marketers measure campaign effectiveness by reach and frequency while social media marketers focus on engagement. Everything from retweets, likes and comments to average time on site, bounce rate, clicks and white paper downloads can steer a modern social media marketer in the right direction to measure campaign results.
Partner with Linx to Build a Social Media Strategy
Looking to apply the basics of marketing to your social media campaigns? Linx is a strategic marketing organization which helps you meet your business objectives and challenges by linking your marketing strategies to your business strategies. Contact us for help with social media strategy and more.
