Social Media, especially Facebook, is becoming increasingly more and more popular in today's marketing strategies as business owners, agencies and marketing directors are understanding they're getting pennies on the dollar. Online marketing is one of the most effective, targeted and cheapest ways to reach highly targeted audiences you want to sell. Average CPM's for Facebook are much lower than traditional methods of advertising, which is why we wanted to help you optimize your pennies with this post.
Creating a BETTER campaign: a few ROOKIE mistakes.
To begin this lesson, I'm going to pick a random restaurant in Arizona to show you some "no-no's". We must understand what to NOT DO in order to gain knowledge of what TO DO in creating better campaigns.
Some of you might be looking at this post saying "Yeah! That's a great post!". But I will disagree with you and show you why this is a traditional rookie mistake in many ways.
Rookie Mistake #1: Branding / Content
This is a very basic image with no branding in mind. I looked at the website and nowhere do they use this font.
All of your content should match & people should recognize your brand across all channels. The rookie mistake here is people pull an image quick, upload and don't take time to really think how this impacts their brand.
Rookie Mistake #2: Sell, Sell, Sell
The second biggest rookie mistake that people taking to social media make is pitching WAY TO MUCH. I'm being serious, stop it. You need to give value first.
Business is founded on relationships. It is your relationships with customers that matters. In relationships you need to give a lot before asking a lot. Why do you think social media is any different?
Always posting with sales and "order" or "buy" would be like asking your best friend to always pay for your movie ticket anytime you went out for a flick, without offering to buy their ticket. Do you think this friendship would last? No! You're a mooch.
The same principle applies in social media. You must give value over and over and over before asking to buy. I'll show you some ways to sneakily ask them to buy without asking up front.
So how do we fix this & create a better relationship?
I'm going to show you how to quickly jumpstart this without going into too much detail because if I gave you everything, this article would be a 30 page PDF pitch deck. Instead, I'll show you some ways to create a better campaign right away and have you seeing success immediately.
Quality Content
Let's keep the restaurant industry example going. Basically, plain and simple, you need better quality content. You need nice images that match your brand voice. These images need to be taken professionally by either a marketing agency like Grand Apps or a photographer you hire. (People don't want too professional, staged images, but I will tell you they DON'T want pixelated, stretched ugly images).
Shake Shack does an amazing job with this! The image is clear, it relates and is nicely set up. Just compare this image to the one above, you can see the difference.
Pro Tip #1: Messaging
Messaging is everything in social media. You need to figure out what story you're trying to tell. This messaging is very relatable to a certain day; Election Day.
You want to make sure your messaging aligns with trending topics in social marketing to better increase your chance of visibility.
Pro Tip #2: Timing
Timing is also everything in social media. This image was nicely timed to post on election day. Think about other upcoming events that might happen & act quick to get the timing right!
Lastly, I'll teach you how to sell.
This last part is my favorite part to teach clients or employees. This is the part of social media that very few people understand. Remember back when we were talking about the rookie mistake of always pitching? This tip will help you pitch without always blasting your audience with an ask.
Step 1: Post quality content that has the correct messaging & timelines.
Step 2: Boost this post for $5 over 2 days.
Step 3: Engage with your audience & open up conversation.
The last step is crucial in the success of getting a sale and converting some ROI in social media. I challenge my team daily to have conversations with social media engagers. I want them to flip a comment into an open ended question to really get them chatting, then you ask them to come in! Because remember, your business is founded on relationships and those relationships need good quality conversation.
Notice how my team will reply on every single persons comments and open up a question to try to get them to comment back, then have an ask.
If you follow this method, you'll see way more results instead of asking people up front.
Give people good content, good conversation and in return they will help you out.
If you want to talk to us about social media marketing and how we can help, just contact us or email in support@grandapps.com.