Effective Strategies for Your Next Social Media Campaign

What is a social media campaign?

A social media campaign is a coordinated marketing effort on behalf of a business that's designed to reinforce information about a product, service, or overall brand through at least one social media platform. Campaigns are strategically focused and have measurable outcomes.

When creating a social media marketing strategy, you have to focus on the key fundamentals. Here are nine tips that will help your campaign kick-off expeditiously!

1. Start With a Clear Goal Vision

Often, before starting something new, we have to brainstorm. The brainstorming process usually consists of identifying the what, why, and how of a campaign. You must first decide what your primary and secondary KPIs goals are for the project. Some common social media campaign goals include: lead generation, growth in revenue, and increased brand or product awareness.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help measure the impact of marketing in an organization. They're used to gauge the impact of marketing initiatives against predefined targets. At the beginning of every client engagement, we build a measurement plan that lays out the KPIs for the execution. The list of KPIs typically used in campaigns looks something similar to:

• Monthly sales growth.
• Average conversion time.
• Qualified leads per month.
• Sales qualified leads (SQL).
• Traffic from organic search.

These indicators have a lot to do with customer acquisition, which is a top priority when it comes to business goals.

2. Explain Objectives

Objectives are the first components of creating campaign briefs. They describe the intended result or outcome of an effort or strategy. Objectives are the target and the foundation for keeping track of your KPIs. When planning your campaign, always define your goals first!

For example, if you're developing a cookbook, you might measure your success by the number of books sold in the first month. These details will help the team understand your goals and come up with solutions that address them.

Your objectives should always be focused, clear, and unambiguous. Being specific sets expectations on the same level and helps everyone get on the same page. Also, measurable objectives let you know if efforts need to be adjusted to be more productive.

3. Focus on Your Target Audience

Any campaign you launch should be focused on your target audience. Instead of creating safe generic advertisements, challenge yourself to use your ads as a voice to speak to your customer base. Attract the customers you need by talking to them on a personal level.

Before you can create content that resonates with the people, you have to know your intended audience. Your ideal audience should connect with your service, message, and mission.

Defining who your real audience is will help you focus on creating great content. It makes it easier to create content that establishes you as an expert in your industry. Figure out who is most likely to buy your product or service: Think about the following factors:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Income level
• Ethnic background

Really getting to know your audience

Social media is a great place to share and connect with your target audience. But it can be difficult to engage your audience when you are not sure how to approach social media.

Bear in mind that social media marketing is not a one-size-fits-all affair. You will want to tailor your efforts to each platform to make sure that you are using the right strategies for each site. You should also consider how investments in different platforms complement each other.

Here are three things to keep in mind when thinking about approaching your target audience.

1. Create a strategy before you start working on your social media campaigns. The biggest mistake companies make when using social media is simply diving in without any preparations or strategies on how to attract an audience. Your goals should be clear and your expectations realistic before you dive into anything else.
   
   
2. List the top three things that your target audience cares about and talk about those first. Once you identify what matters most to your audience, create posts around those topics and address them in a voice that resonates with your target audience.
   
   
3. Know the rules of engagement for each platform you use. Every social network has different guidelines for interacting with followers. So find out how the particular platform works. And figure out how your audience prefers to consume content there. Plus, different social media platforms are great for different business goals.

4. Measurement of Success

Traditionally, a SMART Goal is something Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. It's important to use SMART objectives so that you can define and measure your campaign's success. When you identify your goal and determine your game plan, you see how attainable it is and how much effort it will require.

Specific goals have a significantly higher chance of being accomplished. Before making a goal specific, the five "W" questions must be considered:

Who: Who is involved in this goal?

What: What do I want to accomplish?

Where: Where is this goal?

When: When do I want to achieve this goal?

Why: Why do I want to achieve this goal?

For example, a general goal would be: "We want to increase the company's sales." A more specific goal would be" "We want to increase the company's sales by 15% in the first 60 days by spreading brand awareness on all urban digital platforms."

Additionally, pay close attention to your workload associated with your current campaign goals. It's essential to make sure your timing doesn't get in the way of other projects next in queue! Your goal should represent an objective that is obtainable in measurable time.

5. Creative Brief

The creative brief is an easy way to get all team members on the same page. Everyone is not going to be involved in the entire process. The summary should capture the client's tone and their specific brand message.

A robust creative brief doesn't just spread quotes about the client's product or services. It also enables us to go the extra mile and create WOW moments for our customers. Creativity is the number one thing that will always highlight your campaign's unique value. It allows you to become a great problem solver in the process.

Creativity helps you see things differently, and it enables you to align with your inner core values. According to Cornerstone University, studies show that creative people are better able to live with uncertainty because they can adapt their thinking to the flow of the unknown.

Mapping out the process

Essentially, your creative brief is a plan that outlines your social media goals and how you plan to achieve them. Use these tips to help you create a great creative brief:

• Identify your audience

• Define your goals.

• Develop specific strategies for each goal.

• Determine your message.

• Create your posts.

6. The Message

A compelling message captures the attention of the target audience. It's easy to understand and does not require any further explanations! When constructing your campaign message, you should always take a participatory approach. The campaign message should include the following elements:

The "ask" is a brief statement of what the campaign wants to change. It should be very positive and inspiring.

The reason for the "ask" is the intentions of what the campaign is trying to achieve. It should tell you why something has to change or the reason behind the message.

The actions needed are typically for the target audience to do something to effect or support the proposed change.

The message should resonate with the target audience and leave an everlasting impression. Make sure you state the problem clearly in a way that indicates the urgency. Lastly, propose a solution and invite the audience to take specific action!

What you’re avoiding when you have a clear message

Social media marketing is hard. It's easy to waste time. So it helps when you can have your message ironed out. Your audience will be able to share your message with millions of people in no time. And you want your message to be easily understood.

Remember, your audience is "shaped" by what they like and what they don't like. So here are some pitfalls that you will avoid when you have a clear message:

• Blogging without a plan

There's not much point in blogging unless you're clear on your goals and strategies. Do you want to drive traffic? Build an email list? Get feedback? Make sales? Whatever your goals are, have them clearly defined in advance and base your blog posts around those objectives.

• Setting the bar too low

Social media can be great for getting customer feedback or identifying influencers or gathering customer insight. It can also be a powerful way to generate leads, but you need to be realistic about your expectations for each channel and each campaign. Don't set the bar so low that you're disappointed with the results, but don't expect miracles either.

• No follow-up plan

An important part of any social media marketing campaign is developing a plan for what happens after you hit "send." You need to be ready to respond to customer questions, comments and feedback as it comes in. Otherwise, it will quickly fall off the radar and your social media efforts will be a waste of time.

• Not tracking performance

You could be tracking likes and shares or raw numbers like website visits, leads generated and sales made. But it's important to know what you're trying to achieve. However, you can track performance if you haven't hammered out the KPIs. And you can't get your KPIs together without knowing what you are trying to achieve.

7. The Tone

The most important aspect of the tone is personality. People buy from people. If customers feel a personal connection to a brand's personality, they are more likely to be receptive to the message delivered. When consumers sense an aspect of a brand's character, the connection resonates emotionally. This emotional response may compel customers to buy the brand's products.

It's crucial that a company accurately targets a specific demographic of consumers. For example, a company focusing on animal lovers may purposely show images of animals without a home or might have sad music playing in the advertisement. However, that same approach would not work well if a company switched its targeted audience to young pregnant women.

Your tone should encourage your audience to improve or achieve a goal with your intended message. Establish your brand as a trusted company by taking an academic approach to stay ahead of your competitors. Push yourself way beyond the traditional idea of a brand's voice by embracing your creativity.

Translating the ideas in your head to words can be a tricky process, but it's not impossible. For the people who are new to the digital marketing world, this process can take time, research, and tweaking. All it takes is looking at the recipe for tone. You just need a little dash of creativity here, some active voice there, a little brand awareness over there, and then boom you've got yourself the tone of voice! It's safe to say the tone of the campaign is vital when trying to tell a story.

8. Campaign Landing Page

The goal of every campaign is to drive traffic to the landing page! A landing page is any web page that a customer can land on. It's usually a standalone page, distinct from your homepage or any other page on your website.

Call-to-Actions are primarily found on landing pages. It serves the purpose of collecting information from consumers. Your CTA is the action you want your website visitors to take on your landing page.

Your Call to Action should be the first thing your visitors see on your page. The more visual and creative you make your page, the more successful you'll be at attaining your marketing objectives.

The best CTAs have commonly used action-oriented words. The more action-oriented your CTA verbs are, the more immediate reactions you'll provoke.

9. Content Ideas

When creating content for your campaign, it's crucial to be a visionary! Consider starting a challenge with your branded ideas based on your campaign details. Create something fun that would be entertaining and engaging for your audience. The most common social media challenges last 7, 14, or 30 days depending on the level of engagement. It's up to you to choose the ideal timeframe that works best for campaign goals.

Your followers can also be great contributors to your Instagram campaign strategies. Sharing user-generated content can bring you closer to growing your social media followers. It allows them to connect with your brand on a personal level.

Planning an Instagram Takeover can help you generate great content from internal and external collaborators. Invite different influencers to take over your company's account for the day! It's a great way to build up social engagement for the targeting campaign.

Bonus Tip:  Sequences

Sequences 'automate your sales outreach and keep your interactions personalized at all stages of the sales process' - HubSpot.

With the help of sequences, you can send a series of targeted email templates to nurture contacts. When contacts reply to any of the emails or book a meeting, they will automatically receive a next action sequence.

Sequences are essential in campaigns because they help you keep track of the customer's buyer journey. For many people, the steps can look similar to this:

• Send our welcome email to new potential members.
• Send follow up email if no response in 48 hours.
• Call the lead again
• Send another follow-up email if no response in 7 days

The above steps are essentially a sequence but imagine if it could happen automatically. HubSpot's sequences are for: automation of the initial engagement and follow up process. Using this approach can help you become more productive with spending time on leads that are engaged.

After completing your social media campaign strategies, you should follow up with all of your new leads and contacts. Following up with your new connections will help open the window of expansion. It's important to continually grow and nurture partnerships with companies that have the same values as you.

Conclusion

At gardenpatch, We are a growth collective that helps rapidly scaling businesses implement frictionless systems that drive more internal and external customers through a "WOW" worthy buyer and customer journey towards advocacy.

Our team of fearless risk-takers can create a marketing campaign and promotional plan that is uniquely for your brand. Together we can explore new ways to reach prospective leads in the digital landscape.

Contact us today for a complimentary consultation to learn about how we can help you reach your target audience, nurture leads, and grow your business with our digital strategies.