Today, social media is one of the most powerful tools for online marketers. According to statistics, in 2018, on average, people spent almost 2 and a half hours a day on social media. In a year, that’s one and a quarter months spent refreshing your social media network’s newsfeed.
People tend to use social media surfing as a relaxation method. When your customers are relaxed you have the best chances of getting some reaction to your ads, some engagement.
If you are a social media specialist or a marketing specialist looking to create a social media marketing plan, here are the aspects you should take into consideration.
1. Define your Business Plan for 2019
Even though it might seem social media should be used for branding purposes only, it has quite good conversion rates. This means that you can use social media networks to generate relevant leads and, in the end, sales.
But, before you make a social media marketing plan, you need to define your business plan for 2019. Are you looking to target B2B, B2C? Are you looking for new approaches in order to reach new markets? Then think about which ones. Are in-person sales more appropriate for your business? You should focus on sending your social media followers to your office or shop.
2. Define Your Audience
Ok. Let’s say you’ve decided to focus on the B2B niche because your company is selling more complex products and this type of clients are more suitable for you.
Now, you need to answer the following questions:
● Where are your clients from? What area do you focus on? Is it your city, is it North America, is it the APAC area?
● What industry are you targeting? If you are selling professional welding machines, you shouldn’t target IT&C companies, should you?
● What about the size of the companies you target? Are you having a low-profit-margin and these companies are large corporations? Do you have a high-profit margin and these companies should be medium and small companies?
● Who are the people you should address? If you are selling professional welding machines, you should target the welders and their team leaders. A CEO wouldn’t engage your ads as easy as the person using these machines on a daily basis. And an employee going to his CEO asking for better machines might have greater chances of success than your social media ad.
3. Set Some Realistic Goals
First, set your business goals. If, during the past three years your year-over-year sales grew by 30%, planning to increase your sales by 100% during 2019 wouldn’t be too realistic, would it? If you are planning to have organic growth in 2019, a 50 percent increase in sales would be more realistic. 2019 will be a good year, you will get over your last years’ sales trend!
Now that you’ve set some overall goals, compare your acquisition channels and set their objectives:
● 40% of sales will be made through your sales department
● 30% of sales will be recurrent clients
● 30% of sales will be made through online channels
○ 60% Google AdWords
○ 40% Social Media
This is how you set the goals for each acquisition channel. Now, this may differ according to your business and the products and services you are selling. The best way to estimate these percentages is to study your business’ results during the past years.
4. Assign a Budget for Your Social Media Plan
When assigning a budget for marketing plans in general and online marketing plans in particular, many managers tend to assign a budget which is not relevant to the channel’s objectives.
Saying to your marketing specialist “I have $100 to invest in social media each week, I want 4 clients each week.” is not very appropriate. You should rather say “I have $100 to invest in social media each week; how many clients can we get out of this budget?”. Or you could ask him “How much money do I have to budget in order to get 4 clients per week?”.
Then he will come to you and say “On Facebook, we have a click-through rate of 2%. This means that out of 100 people seeing the ad, 2 will access our website. Our website’s conversion rate is 2%. This means that for a sale, we need 50 clients to visit our website.”
Now, if we are going backward, it means that for your company to make a sale you need your Facebook ad to be displayed to roughly 2500 persons. This is how you make a proper budget estimation!
If you are looking to make social media one of your acquisition channels, you should consider these four steps next time you make a social media marketing plan. Remember, 2019 will be a killer year for your business! Act accordingly!
Author’s Bio: Lauren Adley is a writer and editor at Best Essays and Besttermpaper. She is dedicated to her family, work and friends. She was working at EssayWritingLab for a long time. She is keen on reading, playing the guitar and traveling. She is interested in educational, marketing and blogging issues. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter and Google+.