Do I Need More Than Social Media Marketing?

Social media is a great place to connect, gain followers, get likes, build engagement, and even build an audience. Would you be surprised to hear that the majority of the product based businesses that I know, that are extremely successful, don’t actually spend a lot of time on their social media marketing? Why is that? It’s because many of these businesses find that their social media marketing doesn’t actually drive sales. While many platforms are helping prioritize ways for people to buy, sometimes social media is just not the main driver of sales. If this is the case for your business, it’s important to evaluate how much time, energy, and money you are spending on your social media marketing. 

3 Ways to Know if You Need to Prioritize Social Media Marketing

1. How many sales are coming from your social media? Have you stopped to evaluate and look at this number? Have you stopped to evaluate and look at how many sales are coming from your email marketing, click from Facebook, ads you may be running, or other social platforms you are using? It may be very eye-opening. If you’re a service based business, you may be spending time on YouTube videos, or podcasting. It’s important to look at what’s converting, where you’re getting views, and where your engagement is coming from. Sitting down and evaluating all the activity within your business is incredibly important to do. I recommend doing this once a quarter, or at least once every 6 months. 
2. When was the last time you searched for something on social media? Ask yourself that question. This is important because generally, when people are going to search for something, whether it’s Starbucks, or cute shoes for kids, or a Halloween costume, people are generally going to 2 places: 1) Google and 2) Pinterest. These are the 2 most popular platforms for searching for goods to buy. That’s not to say these are the only two places that people look to. For example, if you’re looking for creative services, you may look to Instagram, or another platform where you can see examples of a person’s work.
   1. Two Things to Prioritize Right Now: website speed and load times
      1. You can easily google “website speed test,” and an option will pop up at the top of your browser, where you can enter your website URL and choose the option to run a speed test. Identifying your website speed will allow you to keep your website optimized. 
3. Social media is meant to be social. This is why a lot of the videos, Reels, and other features are amazing and so fun to watch. But, social media is meant to drive community engagement and social interaction, so it may not always be the best option for long-term, customer engagement, or the best way to drive your audience to purchase your products. 

Information Update: Social media is going to change. Many social media platforms will be looking to create ways for businesses to monetize. Because video is becoming the primary form of content, social media companies have to find ways for businesses to be able to monetize, or those businesses will find another way to market their products and services. That means you are going to start seeing things, like ads on Reels, ads that you can’t scroll past, ads on TikTok, etc. For small businesses, this could present a great opportunity to increase exposure and drive some sales from your social media.  

Social media is meant to be a fun and useful tool, but at the end of the day, it’s important to know where your sales are coming from, so you can prioritize your marketing efforts and strategies.   

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Marketing Strategy for Product Based Businesses

Before developing your marketing strategy and how you want to market your business, you want to look at these 3 key things: 

1. Know your brand – Knowing your brand will help you set parameters around how you want your brand to show up. Examples include, your brand voice, primary brand colors, secondary brand colors, etc.
2. Know your budget – If you’re preparing to put any money into your marketing, it’s vital that you have an established budget. Having an established budget will help you allocate funds toward important services, like professional photography, social media management, or any other services you may need to help with daily business operations. 
3. Know your ideal client – Your ideal client is not everybody. There are certain people, with certain traits and habits, that are in a certain age group, that are going to be most drawn to what you have to offer. Identifying your ideal client will allow you to narrow in on the specific type of buyer personality you want to target and the type of content strategy you want to implement.

Let’s Talk Strategy 

You know the importance of planning ahead. The majority of the time, any photos and videos, or content that is created and curated specifically for your marketing purposes, generally needs to happen 3-4 weeks before you begin executing your strategy. This allows time for the photographer to edit your photos and provide you the opportunity to plan and schedule your content. Having quality photos and videos will be incredibly important to your marketing. Using your smartphone to capture photos and videos can also be beneficial for your marketing efforts. Social media is a great place to use photos and videos that you have captured on your phone. When using your phone to capture visuals, make sure you clean off your phone to prevent blurry, or smudged images. Make sure you have a well-lit space, or add some extra light to capture the best possible images. 

Testing Phase

If you’re good about planning ahead, then you’ll want to do a testing phase. The testing phase will help you see what’s working well in your business and where you need to spend more time. With the amount of saturation in the online business market, it’s important to create a strategy that will help your business stand out. That means you want to test your content in a few different places to see what is responsive. Generally, to do a successful testing phase you want to do about 30-60 days worth of time, to be able to effectively measure what’s working and what’s converting to sales. This means, you will need to make sure you have your tracking software and analytics software in place and functioning properly, in order to get an accurate look at your measurable metrics. 

Tips for testing:

• Test 2-3 platforms – select platforms that work best for your business and then generate a variety of content that you can share. 
• Give 30-40 days to test and then check analytics and evaluate your strategy

Full Evaluation Phase

It’s important to look at all areas of your marketing. Social media may be one area to look at, but many successful product based businesses find that social media is a great place to generate awareness, but it’s not optimal for sales. Many product based businesses get more sales from building their email list, or focusing on their SEO. 

Double Down Phase

It’s valuable to double down on your marketing efforts that are working well. It’s important to evaluate content performance, identify the type of content that is converting, and establish where your sales are coming from. Once you have established where your sales are coming from, you can double down on your marketing efforts for those specific channels. It’s also important to look at the type of content that is converting. You may find that blogs are performing well, or emails are generating a lot of engagement. Once you have identified the type of content that is working best for your business, you can allocate more time and energy into creating content that converts.  

Marketing efforts take time, so be patient with yourself through the process. Keep in mind that to see success in marketing is typically 3-6 months. As you get more consistent with testing and start to understand your audience better, you will begin to see what works well for your business and how you can increase your sales.  

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Social Media Manager VS. Creative Agency – What Do You Need?

Let’s talk about the differences between a Social Media Manager and a Creative Agency. There are a number of factors that separate the two, but today we will touch on some of the specific characteristics that define a social media manager and a creative agency. To dive deeper, let’s look at each entity as a “persona,” or “avatar.”

Social Media Manager

A social media manager is someone who manages your social media. Generally, that person does everything, from creating the graphics, to the copy, to the hashtag research and more. This person is someone who also assists with helping you expand your reach, increase your audience, and create a consistent presence across social platforms. In some cases, social media managers can be focused on one, specific platform, or they might be focused on multiple, different platforms. Often, this person will help you manage your content and be integral in helping you share your content online. 

Creative Agency

A creative agency is similar to a marketing agency, but they take a more creative-first approach. This typically means that they have a photography and videography background, allowing them to take a more creative approach in the type of content they produce, how it’s marketed, and how it’s implemented into the full-scope of your marketing. Creative agencies generally focus heavily on content management, but also the implementation and evaluation of everything. They typically look beyond social media to address all areas of your marketing, including your email campaigns, community communications, SEO, blogs, and audience expansion.

Social media managers and creative agencies do share some common elements. In most cases, social media managers and creative agencies both work around strategy. Creative agencies may focus heavily on creative strategy, while social media managers may focus more on social strategy and determining how to present your content across social platforms. Both also focus on content. Creative agencies will often create content for you, while social media managers will collect content from you, or stock shops. 

To recap, a social media manager is someone who is focused in one, specific area of your marketing, while a creative agency looks at all areas of your marketing and ensures everything is creative, engaging, and most importantly, converting.

How can you determine which option will best serve your business?

There are a few ways to determine which will be the right choice for you, right now:

1. Social media managers focus solely on your social media. Is social media a driving factor for your business’ sales, right now? Do you have an audience there that is used to purchasing, or needs you to continue to show up there, in order to purchase the products that you have to offer? If you do, you may consider a social media manager. 
2. If you are looking at additional platforms, beyond social media, you may consider a creative agency. For example, if you are getting better engagement through email campaigns, or blogs, it may be beneficial to work with a creative agency, who can provide additional support, beyond social media.  
3. Budget will also be a factor to consider. Generally, creative agencies and social media managers will cost somewhere between $500 to a few thousand dollars per month, but there can be some fluctuation based on services, etc.

When making the choice between a social media manager and a creative agency, make sure to take into consideration where you need the most assistance in your business.

Consider the following:

• Where is your business seeing the most success, currently?
• Where can someone provide support to save you time in your business? 
• Where could you benefit from assistance with strategy, content creation, and implementation?

If you’re interested in working with a social media manager or creative agency, reach out. Many will offer a free consult call, to discuss how they can specifically support your business needs. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can get crystal clear on your marketing plan and how our team can support you along the way, schedule a free consultation call today!

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