Alle Ceambur

If you know how to set SMART goals for social media you can get REAL results from marketing. If you don’t, you’re just wasting your time.

The popularity of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram has been staggering over the past few years. It’s so influential that has left a mark on how brands are created, how they communicate with customers, how their latest promotions are shared, and basically, how profits are made in this digital era.

Small business owners and marketers alike are investing more time and resources in trying to figure out how to grow their online presence and capture market share.

The most common answer I give to anyone asking me how to grow on social media is: Plan your social media strategy.

Any successful social media marketing strategy starts with strategic planning. Or, as a wise man once said:

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”

How to set the right goals for social media marketing

Tip: Set goals to address your biggest challenges 

The first thing you need to do is figure out what you wish to achieve from social media marketing. It’s important to set goals (and KPIs) that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. In marketing, we call them SMART goals.

Examples of social media goals you can set:

Goal #1: Increase brand awareness

Brand awareness is the #1 goal that most businesses have on social media.

How to increase brand awareness?

By creating authentic, relevant and produces long-lasting brand awareness. You should also avoid focusing too much on pushing sales pitches to your audience.

Instead, produce content that is relevant and useful for your followers (aka. content marketing). By establishing trust and having open communication with your audience, people will be more likely to recognise and be loyal to your brand – If they don’t, it means that your content is not relevant to the audience!

That means you need to either change the audience or the content.

Goal #2: Maximise sales from Social Media

I’ve already mentioned that you should not be posting salesy content on social media. With one exception. Paid advertising.

Running ads on social media is an effective way to convert your audience into buyers.

How to increase sales from social media?

1. Keyword search. If you are trying to increase your revenue, you should spend some time monitoring and researching on phrases and hashtags for your industry. You can also do this by looking at your competitors. What strategies are they using to drive engagement or sales? Which hashtags they use on Instagram? Pallyy can give you the answer.
2. Effective targeting. Another thing you may want to do is segment your target market into smaller groups and create content that is relevant for each group rather than using broad targeting. Through segmentation and targeting you will connect with the relevant audience for each of your product/service. These are the people who are more likely to purchase your product/service.
3. Influencer marketing. Do you sell physical products? Then, you can make use of influencer marketing – which is basically connecting with Instagramers and offering to pay them a fee (or % of their sales) to post content with your product.

Goal #3: Drive traffic to your website/physical store

Many brick and mortar stores are using social media as a way to attract buyers to their physical stores. If that is your goal, your brand should be promoting enough content on social platforms to entice buyers to visit your online/physical store.

Effective ways of achieving this strategy are about alerting customers of what’s going on in your stores, including promotions and sharing behind the scenes of your store.

If you’re trying to get more traffic to your website, you can consider starting a business blog. An educational blog can help your business pull traffic from Google and attract people who are interested in your brand.

Want to start a blog? Check out my top tips here.

The takeaway: How to set goals for Social Media Marketing

Setting the right goals for marketing is crucial to any marketing strategy. These goals can help you determine which platforms to use and which metrics best measure your success. And

Are you trying to maximise sales in a short time? Then you can consider keyword search (Google). Or if you have decided influencer marketing is the way to go, you will most probably focus on Instagram.

I would advise you to keep your social media strategy simple and focus on 1 or 2 objectives.

Does your existing social media content support your business goals?

If it doesn’t, it means it’s time to rethink your strategy, starting from your goals. Check out this post to learn how I plan my social media strategy, including my go-to social media scheduler for agencies and brands.

I hope this breakdown helped you get some inspiration on the different social media goals of your business. Good luck and don’t hesitate to contact me if you need further advice! 🙂

Have a great day ahead!

#socialmediamarketing #strategicplanning #marketingstrategy #goals #leadership #businessadvisory

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References:

Brent B. (2019) [Online] Available from <https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-strategy/>

Gist (2019) [Online] Available from <https://demotix.com/why-social-media-marketing-is-crucial-for-your-local-business/>