3 Actionable Steps Towards Savvy Social Strategizing

Focus your ad spend and efforts like a digital marketing pro

In today’s digital world, any brand looking to increase its reach, sales, and revenues, must tap into the thriving social media universe. That means creating content designed to attract the social media user’s eye, get them to read up, click through and convert, from the comfort of their News Feed or in a sidebar ad.

But with so many digital channels available, in addition to the various other marketing media you are likely using for your campaigns, how do you know where to focus your ad spend and efforts to maximize returns, without burning out or running dry?

You’re in luck because at Digital Girl, we are veritable social media butterflies. Over the years, we’ve honed our social media marketing skills, learned best practices and tips and tricks of the trade - and today, we’re sharing a sneak peek with you!

Here are three actionable steps you can take RIGHT NOW, to up your social strategizing, and start making the most of your social media marketing resources - human and monetary.

Step 1 - Map out any existing digital assets, today

Even if you’re a social media marketing newbie, you may already have some digital assets in circulation on one or more social network. If this is the case, you’re in a great place. Leverage this information to benefit your future campaigns: take a look at the analytics and insights of how these posts performed, to learn which fared well, and which were less well-received. Then, use this information to optimize poorer performing posts, and only create new posts that match the marketing content (type, not word-for-word) and style of your best assets.

Step 2 - Get to know your target audience better

Like with any other venture you wish to succeed, you’re going to have to research your social accounts and audiences to better be able to hone your marketing content. Take some time to get to know your target audience on a more intimate level: who they are, what they’re interested in, which social channels they prefer, how much time they spend on social media, what activities they engage in on social media, what types of social content they view and click on, etc. Understanding these and other tidbits about your target audience members will help you learn where YOU should be focusing your campaigns and campaign efforts. I.e., if your audience members are mostly on Instagram, an image-based social channel, creating text-based posts for Facebook or LinkedIn isn’t the best use of your resources. However, if you learn that your audience is mostly made up of soccer moms who love swapping parenting tips on Facebook groups, creating highly-shareable content on time-saving hacks involving your offering could be your in.

Step 3 - Balance your budget

Before launching any social campaign, it’s extremely important that you know how much ad spend is available, and how much of it will be spent on every channel. Namely, create and stick to a budget, taking into account that each social media network’s paid ad platform has its own pricing mechanism - some cost more than others, for the same, or for varying services and capabilities. What’s more, these costs can vary according to the season of the year, day of the week or time of day you’re posting, ad quality, how many social users you’re targeting, and several other factors. On Facebook, your cost-per-click (CPC) can even change according to the industry you’re in, as evidenced in the graph below:

Source: Wordstream

• Facebook and Instagram: You pay per cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM).
• LinkedIn: Calculates impressions only when your ad is “visible for at least 300 milliseconds with at least 50% in view on a member’s device screen or browser window.” CPC payments are charged for clicks on your content, company name or company logo.
• Twitter: CPC is only for link clicks; CPM is according to any time your ad is shown to users.

When tabulating the average cost of promoting content on the above four social channels, Facebook is the most economical, while LinkedIn is the most expensive. Depending on where your target audience spends its social time, you may have to shuffle your ad spend around to ensure you can cover costs.

Bottom line

With a plethora of digital channels out there, it can be overwhelming to think about where to focus your budget and resources, but when following the above three steps, you’ll see your content more seamlessly resonate with your target audience, earning you the returns you seek, without going out of pocket or burning out in the process. Note that even if your research says 99.99% of your audience spends all of its time on Channel X, you should still never put all of your eggs in a single basket and fully neglect the other channels. Instead, focus 80% of your ad spend and resources on the channel(s) you know work for your business, and 20% on the other main ones. Who knows - maybe you’ll reach someone, somewhere you never expected and forge a lasting brand-customer relationship!

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