It’s tougher than ever to get your marketing content noticed, even more so if you're an SME. We've compiled some tips to help you get noticed over your competitors...
These days organic reach in social media is pretty much none existent. Currently, around half of all content gets zero shares, and less than 0.1 percent is shared more than 1,000 times.
Additionally, the typical internet marketing conversion rate is less than one percent.
Shocked?
Assuming you understand how content marketing works, then you shouldn't be!
A content marketing strategy for many businesses looks a lot like this:
Create new content.
Share content on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).
People buy your products / services.
This almost never happens and then you're left scratching your head as to what the problem is and why no one is buying your products / services. Instead, most content goes absolutely nowhere. The consumer purchase journey isn’t a straight line—and it takes time.
This is where paid social media advertising comes in...
Paid social media advertising provides incredible content promotion to an audience that you'd never be able to reach organically. Even more so, it's proven to turn visitors into leads and customers. And the best part? You don’t need a huge budget to get started. So, with this in mind, what does a more realistic social media content marketing strategy look like?
Create - Produce content and share it on social media.
Amplify - Selectively promote your top content on social media.
Tag - Build your remarketing audience by tagging site visitors with a cookie.
Filter - Apply behavioural and demographic filters on your audience.
Remarketing - Remarket to your audience with display ads, social ads, and remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) to promote offers.
Convert - Capture qualified leads or sales (dependent on your type of business)
Repeat.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy right?
If you're in need of a bit more guidance then here's where our handy tips for using social media to promote your marketing content can help. You can use them as a guide to get more people viewing your content, visiting your Facebook or Twitter page, sharing your content, clicking through to your website and much more.
1. Improve Your Quality Score
If you've ever used Google Ads you'll know the term 'Quality Score' is used to rate the quality and relevance of your keywords and PPC ads, and this in turn influences your cost-per-click. Facebook calls their version a 'Relevancy Score' whilst Twitter’s is called an 'Quality Adjusted Bid'. Whatever it’s called, Quality Score is a crucial metric. The way to increase Twitter and Facebook Quality Scores is to increase post engagement rates. A high Quality Score is great because you'll get a higher ad impression share for the same budget at a lower cost per engagement. On the flip side, a low Quality Score means you'll get a low ad impression share and a high cost per engagement. So, how do you increase engagement rates? Simple - promote your best content. How do you figure out which of your content is your best I hear you ask? Test it out!
For example,
Post lots of content (organically) to Twitter and use Twitter Analytics to see which content gets the most engagement.
Post the top performers from Twitter organically to LinkedIn and Facebook. Again, track which posts get the most traction.
Pay to promote the best ones on Facebook and Twitter.
And remember - the key to paid social media advertising is to be picky. Don't waste your £££ and pay to promote anything and everything - cast a narrow net and maximise your engagement rates.
2. Increase Engagement With Audience Targeting
Don't waste your money by targeting everyone. Put some time and effort into thinking about exactly who your target audience is and then target them specifically. Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn all let you narrow down your target audience by income, interests, location and much more. Keyword targeting and other audience targeting methods helps turn average ads into unicorns.
3. Getting The Most Out Of Your Budget With Paid Social Media Advertising Campaigns
When you're running your ad campaigns make sure you're running them only for the things that matters most to your business, whether it’s clicks to your website, app installs, followers, leads, or actual video views. If you're paying per 'like' then you're just throwing money away!
4. Thinking Out Of The Box To Promote Your Blog Content
Many people on social media don’t like when all a profile shares is just titles and links back to their blog.
To make your social profiles more appealing to more people you have to share what appears to be 'social media only' content. Here's how to do it:
Step 1 – Find A Blog Post And Pull Out 3 to 5 Snippets Read through the content and look for key points that will make great social content on their own. It can be anything your audience would find valuable or interesting. Step 2 – Schedule The Snippets Take your snippets and share them via a series of posts. Ideally, accompany the posts with a relevant image to catch the eye and further increase engagement.
Step 3 – Share Short Tips That Wouldn’t Make Worthwhile Blog Posts
Sometimes you’ll come across ideas or tips in your work that are worthwhile to share via social media, but aren’t worthwhile as a full blog post. Share these simple, short tips on social media to add more value to your social updates. Your followers will appreciate that you’re not bombarding them with blog links all the time and if your snippets are of interest they’ll want to visit your blog to get even more content.
5. Social Media Remarketing
Social media remarketing, on average, boosts engagement by three times and doubles conversion rates, while cutting your costs by a third. Make the most of it! Use social media remarketing to push your hard offers, such as sign-ups, consultations, and downloads.
6. Combine Paid Search & Social Media Advertising
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) is incredibly powerful. You can target customised search ads specifically to people who have recently visited your site when they search on Google. It increases click-through and conversion rates by three times and reduces cost-per-click by a third. There’s one problem. By definition, RLSA doesn’t target people who are unfamiliar with your brand. This is where social media advertising comes in: it helps more people become familiar with your brand. Social media advertising is a cheap way to start the process of biasing people towards you. While they may not need what you’re selling now, later, when the need arises, people are much more likely to do a branded search for your products / services , or click on you during an unbranded search because they remember your compelling content.
Feeling overwhelmed? We can help!
You can't be an expert at everything! If you're a small or medium-sized business owner who is feeling overwhelmed, unsure of where to start, or just don't have the time when it comes to social media or marketing in general, don’t worry. Hiring an experienced marketing consultant can take the pressure off and help your business grow in ways you never thought possible. JB Marketing has over 12 years experience at helping businesses large and small with their marketing needs and we have the necessary expertise to help your business succeed.
About us
JB Marketing is a full service marketing consultancy based in Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire. With 12 years marketing experience, you can rely on us to provide innovative and intelligent marketing communications that are tailored to your audience and deliver real business benefits.
JB Marketing works with clients in a range of industries across a variety of marketing channels including social media, email marketing, event management, design & print, digital advertising, paid search, offline promo, copywriting and much more.
Some clients use us as an extension of their team, where as for others we’re trusted marketing advisors. However you choose to work with us, we always act as if we’re a part of your business.
Simply get in touch to find out more. We'll take care of everything for you, so you can focus on running your business.