Social Media Marketing Strategies for Business Success

The horizon of marketing shifted laterally towards social media marketing nowadays. It has been identified as a powerful tool that businesses are utilizing to reach prospects and customers. People are gaining insights about businesses and brands through various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The era of digital marketing has evolved over time with the development of various strategies and objectives. The social media marketing follows five fundamental principles namely, profile optimization, posting, engaging, advertising and measuring. The formulation of social media based marketing strategies has helped firms define their business boundaries with assignment of time and expertise. The widespread usage of social media has lead businesses flourish with strong direct engagement with end-users.

In the early adoption phase of social media, business owners were not sure whether to deploy their resources into social media marketing or not with the challenges of bootstrapping and resource-constrains. The hesitation in implementation prevailed with a fear of getting dent in the overall business operation lines and thus social media marketing was considered as a sideline project especially for small scale industries.

The companies are aligning the corporative strategies with the overall digital marketing strategies to gain valuable insights of prevailing market conditions. Few of the measurable goals that companies are adopted for firm’s growth through social media portals are regular optimization of social media accounts, monitoring customer responses and feedbacks and regular posting of videos, pictures and stories. The marketing strategies of social media have increased the percentage engagement rate of end-customers, engaging and driving more traffic of customers.  The successes of business are directly inclined with the social media marketing parameters in terms of:

1. Exposure
2. Website Traffic
3. Customer Loyalty
4. Insights Of Audience
5. Leads
6. SEO
7. Partnerships
8. Reduction In Expenses

The primary research work indicates suggests more than 60 percentage rise in the volume of the social media marketing parameters. The results suggest that higher the percentage engagement of audience through social media networks, higher is the percentage chance of attainment of marketing goals. But, the question that arises is why we are shifting towards social media marketing? The answer is the login duration rate of average adult on social media (2.5 hours), monthly active user’s record of 3.78 billion and easy accessibility of social media sites on mobile (91%).

To make the social media marketing strategies more effective, the rule of 70:20:10 has been used. The rule envisages the composition breakdown with 70 percent focus on informational segments which includes education, advice, important updates and insights, 20 percent focus on emotions which includes company culture, core values, fun and inspirations and 10 percent focus on promotional activity which includes direct and indirect promotions of products and services.  But the rule stated above can be effective only if the extent of its creation of roadmap and its implementation planning. It is required by the marketing firm to create an actionable social media marketing plan depending on the type of platform being selected, with direct alignment with firm’s goals and objectives. The results of social index results has showed that 90 percent of the audiences or customers are following the trends that are in the market due to large presence on social media which is higher in comparison with the publicity of products through family and friends. The emergence of social media marketing has decreased the dependency on marketing channels such as TV streaming and print media.

Not only large scale firms but the small and medium scale firms are also getting positive impacts with fostering of their respective brand reputation. The data engagement through social media marketing has enhanced the respective customer attention and feedbacks. The positive customer satisfaction reports have helped business cultivate and amplify their brand visibility. In the data driven market of today’s world, the companies are focusing on paid partnerships with social media platforms that have large engagement of data. The cultural acceptance of social media has boosted its growth rate, helping firm’s cost-cut their marketing funds requirements, with a unilateral focus on social media marketing channels.

The growing involvement and active participation of newer generation on social media, has highlighted three important traits for brand content which are authenticity, reliability and entertainment, reducing the marketing aspects towards product- centric plans. Thus, although social media is a crowded place, the firms need to focus on three parameters namely, repurpose, repost and recycle to grasp market opportunities overcoming and responding positively against the negative aspects of social media marketing. So, the effective social media strategies has helped maximize business profits through creation of high quality content aligning with  comprehensive social media strategies.

Blog By:

Ms. Giti Vatsa

Assistant Professor

Biyani Girls College