What is social media marketing?

Definition

Social media marketing is a type of digital marketing in which different businesses use social media networks to sell their products or services. They can also use these platforms for brand building and convey their business voice to the audience.

Start of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is not very old; it is just 10-15 years old; it comes into play after the rise of different social media platforms as they have a vast audience. So they use this audience to monetize their platform by giving access to various businesses to show their ads.

And this is one of the most recent types of digital marketing and perhaps the most effective one because it gives access to a broader audience and gives the ability to control the marketing through content and audience data.

How Social Media Marketing works?

Social media marketing works on a straightforward principle lets understand it with an example:

A business owner has a product to sell, and he is in search of an audience to convince them and sell his product; on the other side, a social media platform has a large audience interested in the same kind of product. The business owner will create an ad on that specific social media platform and then run it on the platform, and the platform will show that add to those interested audiences. Most platforms work on the pay per click model. Every time a person clicks on that ad, the platform will charge money from the seller's account. As a result, the seller will enjoy the lead. Pretty a simple deal, but there are many technicalities involved in this process. Success in social media marketing depends on a lot of factors. Let's discuss some important ones:

Success Factors in Social Media marketing

1. Social Media Platform

The first and foremost success factor in social media marketing is the choice of social media marketing because everyone, like everyone, does not use every platform, mainly uses Facebook. Still, teen girls and young boys primarily use Instagram. On the other hand, Linkedin is used by business and formal professionals, so you need to choose the platform very wisely; if your product is related to business, you can think about starting ads on LinkedIn. Still, if your product relates to fashion, Instagram can be a good option for you. But Facebook is the most common platform used by nearly every business; from selling cars to selling show laics, Facebook monetizes everything. So your success is decided by choosing which social platform and how much you are an expert about it. Because every forum has a different working algorithm, you need to first learn about that platform to get the most out of your marketing.

2. Targeted Audience

The audiences you will target on the social media platform will also be one of the core deciding success factors in social media marketing. Your product needs to be very selective here; If you are selling something for men over 40 years of age, you do not need to target a young audience.

3. How you sell

The type of media you sell use platform also factor in your success on this social media marketing; if you are selling something through an image that can only be explained through a video, you will lose in this marketing. Why? Because you cannot deliver your message correctly if the audience cannot understand what you are selling and how much value it will add to their lives, how can you expect them to buy your product because it does not fulfil their need?

4. Engaging Content

It is imperative to understand the value of content on social media platforms, these platforms only run based on content, and you can never put content out of the game. Because it matters a lot; if your is not exciting and eye-catchy, then why anyone bothers to stop scrolling and read or view what you are showing in your ad? So if you want to win in this necessary type of marketing, focus on creating engaging and valued content.

5. Research and Research

Research is also one of the most critical success factors in social media marketing; if you genuinely want to succeed in this type of marketing, you need to research the proper case studies in the exact product you will sell on social media. Furthermore, if you explore the right way, you can quickly get a lead from your competitors because they lack research.

6. Call to action

Much social media marketing does not see the daylight of success because they lack a clear call to action. They have everything engaging content to targeted audience plus right platform, but as they have no clear call to action, they lose many leads. So always include a clear call to move at a proper time and place in your ad that should be easy for the interested customer to land on and buy and read more about your product.

What's the future of Social Media Marketing?

As much as the future of social media marketing is concerned, it is bright because more and more businesses are coming online, and coronavirus with pandemic has increased this race many folds. So there will be only an upward spike in social media marketing; you need to understand its basics. Then, after learning its technical details, you can also launch a successful social media campaign; it is more east than you think. Still, you cannot miss any point because everything counts in these campaigns.