Marketing on social media is becoming one of the primary ways to establish an audience and reach potential customers. The problem I personally see with businesses and people who try and market on social media is they don’t know their audience and are using the platform wrong.
As an avid social media user, I believe I picked up the do’s and don’ts of certain social media platforms, and what it takes to be successful when engaging a key audience.
“One thing to keep in mind is that social media is a “see” platform, meaning people go there to see things, not do things. That makes it difficult for businesses with a long sales cycle to make sales straight from the platform.”
Social Media Strategy, You’re Doing It Wrong – Blue Corona
Here are TWO major things to think about when marketing on social media:
- Just because they’re looking doesn’t mean they’re buying
When promoting a good or service via social media it doesn’t always equate sales. I see this the most when influencers are promoting a product for a business. The influencer may have 100,000 followers, but when it comes to buying what they’re selling they might get a less than 10 percent purchasing rate.
This is because of the sales funnel.
When your marketing something for your audience to purchase or participate in, at the top of the funnel are all the people your product is being reached by that can have the potential, to reach the bottom. At the bottom of the funnel are actual customers that engage and continuously purchase your product.
“People on social media are at the very top of the sales funnel… Unless your product can be an impulse buy, the likelihood of them traveling all the way down instead of scrolling to the next post in their feed is slim to none.”
Visuals, Visuals, Visuals
Blue Corona
2. Visuals, Visuals, Visuals
It may be hard to market your businesses by solely posting pictures, videos, and memes. It doesn’t work for every audience or business.
However, if using visually leaning social media platforms does fit your social media business model then you are in luck. Depending on who you’re getting your social media advice for, they might be telling you different things.
According to a report done by the Social Examiner, marketing professionals with more experience are choosing and using visual leaning social media platforms more than marketers that just entered the field. The use of YouTube rose from 37 percent to 63 percent, Pinterest rose from 32 percent to 46 percent and Instagram from 15 percent to 26 percent.
Just from engaging in different types of audiences on social media, I can tell you original graphics are a big deal on Twitter and Instagram. People are interested in looking at creative content, now that doesn’t mean that it will secure every user into your audience, but it will help with the constant increase in your reach and impressions.
Plus, businesses want their products and their brands to go viral. One of the main ways to go viral is through visual media and knowing your target audience. For example, Fenty Beauty on Twitter does a great job of staying in tune with their audience demographic (18-24) on the platform. They use memes and popular slang to promote their products. Most recently they created video ad for one of their products, STUNNA Lip paint, using viral Twitter star, Super Bitch.
The tweet went viral and accomplished the brand’s goal of remaining relevant in the make up industry and reminding customers about the new lip paint (the video came timely with a restock of Fenty Beauty, in-store and online).
Social media is all about your audience and finding your niche. Once you do that, you might have an opportunity to reach people who could turn into potential customers.
Spartans Innovate 
I really like the layout of this piece and how you made it into more of a listicle and kept it very visually engaging with the photos. I also like how you included the sales funnel because I think that’s a really important point to make when talking about social media marketing.
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