by Francois Muscat | Mar 15, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
Seemingly overnight, TikTok, the Chinese-owned video sharing social media app, has exploded to world-wide acclaim. The rapid rise of the video-themed social app has got even social media behemoths like Facebook and Instagram concerned, and fading upstarts like Snapchat scrambling for new ways to stay relevant.
For marketers, however, the TikTok explosion should only cause excitement. It presents a trendy new channel for your brand to connect with your customers and prospects. Here are a few TikTok statistics that show why the social app must catch your full attention as a marketer:
- Over 1 billion downloads,
- More monthly installs than Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, and
- 500+ million global active monthly users.
As you can see, you should be leveraging the TikTok opportunity to market your business. Here are three tips to make your task easier.
3 Tips for Marketing Your Brand on TikTok
1. Create Videos That Are Relevant to Your Business
It sounds straightforward enough, but some creativity is needed if your videos are going to attract the attention of your audience on a platform that also has thousands of other trending videos.
If your product requires some assembly, a good idea will be to produce an assembly demo video. For their #GuacDance challenge, Mexican food-themed American restaurant chain, Chipotle leveraged the popularity of Dr. John’s ‘Guacamole Song’ by encouraging their customers to record and post videos of their avocado-themed dance moves.
2. Partner With Influencer
As you grow your own following on TikTok, leverage the popularity of influencers to market your brand. Again the advice here is to do your research and create relevant content.
Importantly, make sure the influencer is a fit for your brand or product. If yours is a food business like Chipotle, then a popular chef will be a great influencer to partner with. Similarly, if you’re a sports apparel brand, then a sports star will be a perfect partner.
3. Be Consistent
As with content marketing where you must aim to produce and share quality content on a regular basis, success on TikTok also depends on your consistency. Be consistent with the regularity with which you post videos as well as with the quality of the videos themselves.
Ensuring you post high-quality videos regularly obviously raises questions of cost. But, you’re not going to do your brand any good by producing a good video that goes viral and then following up with a dud when your audience is all excited and ready to engage more. Establish a posting schedule and then stick to it.
Keen on adding TikTok to your suite of social media marketing channels? WSI OMS has a team of social media marketing experts ready to use their global insights, expertise and experience to help you make the most of the TikTok marketing opportunity. Contact us today for more information on our social media services.
by Francois Muscat | Feb 13, 2020 | Instagram, Social Media Marketing
Instagram is a social media marketing must-have, as it’s a great platform to visually present the services or products of your business. With a focus on images, including video, it allows your business to make connections and share posts across multiple social platforms. For instance, according to Instagram, more than 200 million users visit at least one business profile daily.
Below, we discuss what else Instagram offers as well as how to set up your account.
Instagram Is Mobile-First, With Shoppable Posts
The vast scope of Instagram is just the tip of the iceberg. Here is what else is offered:
- One of the more noticeable aspects of Instagram posts is the use of #hashtags – keywords that summarize what is being said in your post. This makes it easy for you to not only to be found, but also to be recognisable.
- Because it was created in 2010, Instagram is truly mobile-first. This means that you can be in the pocket of your prospects and customers – increasing your engagement with them through high-quality photos, local hashtags and even by uniting with other brands.
- Instagram recently launched Instagram Shoppable Posts that allows users to tag and shop products directly from organic Instagram posts. Simply add tags to the products in your photos with links that include the product description, price and the ability to “shop now”, which will lead the user to your online store.
How to Set up Your Instagram for Business Account
Follow these easy steps to set up your Instagram business account:
- Start by setting up a business Instagram account or converting a personal account to business.
- Decide on an appropriate social media marketing campaign, bearing the following in mind:
- Who you are marketing to?
- What stage of the customer journey are you targeting? Is it the awareness, engagement, conversion or the customer?
- Why you are marketing?
- What are your goals?
- How will you measure marketing success?
- What is your timeframe?
- When you will be posting? (Keep in mind that a regular posting schedule is imperative.)
- Optimize your profile for the best results.
- Test and measure using Instagram Insights.
We Offer Solutions for Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
For more information on our digital marketing, social media marketing and online reputation management solutions, contact us now.
by Marelise da Silva | Feb 10, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is no longer only for brands that sell directly to consumers. B2B brands have been making waves on social media, stepping into the territory that has traditionally been dominated by B2C brands. Here is a guide to creating a successful social media marketing campaign for B2B brands.
Social Media Marketing Guide for B2B Brands:
Your Audience Should Be Your Top Priority
B2B brands need to dig deeper when coming up with strategies to market themselves on social media. If your industry is not as flashy as fashion and cosmetics, you’ll need to shift your focus to your audience. Research is key to understanding what your audience wants, what they will respond to and how they will perceive your efforts. Audience research should be the first piece in the B2B social media marketing puzzle. It will lay the foundation for the rest of your strategy.
Take a look at successful B2B campaigns, make a note of how competitors are marketing on social media and use these examples to understand what audiences react to.
Goals and Measurements
Understanding your audience will not only enable you to set realistic and strategic goals to build your brand on social media, but it will also help you to find the correct ways to measure whether you are indeed reaching those goals.
If you are focussing on bringing in new customers and increasing revenue, you’ll want to set a goal related to lead generation that can be measured in clicks and conversions. This will give you an indication of the following:
- How well is your audience responding to your messaging, and
- How many potential new customer relationships are being created by your campaign.
If your main focus will be building the brand reputation, you should be focussing on reach which can be measured in impressions, engagement and follower count. This will provide an overview of how your audience is growing, which kinds of content they like to interact with and how your audience is connecting with your messaging.
Form a Strategy
When your audience research and goals are in place, you need to write down a plan of action to follow through on your intentions. Your strategy needs to provide for the following:
- Outline your target audience,
- Clarify your goals,
- Clarify how you will measure progress,
- Confirm the platforms you’ll be working on, and
- Confirm the types of content you’ll be creating for each platform.
Your strategy can also include details on how these steps will be executed and show research on your competitors.
It needn’t be an overwhelming and complicated document. Rather, aim for a simple roadmap that can be followed to reach your end destination. It should be clear, concise and easy for anyone to consult when doubt arises.
Create a Personality
Another important part of your social media marketing plan is the brand personality that will be used when interacting and engaging on social media. The personality should already be quite clear in the brand’s marketing efforts, and can be used to steer interactions on social media.
Many B2B companies are overly professional and even a little stiff on social media. That is often a huge turn off for audiences. There’s a difference between being boring and being professional, and you’ll need to find your brand’s personality sweet-spot to balance these two aspects. There are fantastic examples of B2B brands creating exciting, believable personalities on social media. So, don’t shy away from researching to find inspiration when creating a personality.
If you’re unsure of any aspects of social media marketing, digital marketing or inbound marketing, contact WSI OMS today to consult with us on your B2B marketing plan.
by Marianna Muscat | Jan 27, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
Are you using social media marketing to boost customer engagement and to increase sales? That it comes with its own costs is no secret. Facebook Advertising for one is a powerful social media marketing channel that has high conversion rates but isn’t free to use. If you have a limited budget but would still want to tap into social media’s considerable marketing potential, here are six of our most reliable tactics that are also easy on the pocket:
Don’t Be the Only Business that’s Not Using Chatbot
Chatbots are fast becoming ubiquitous in social media marketing and customer support. Thousands of chatbots are active on Facebook Messenger, with more being added all the time. What’s more, users are increasingly willing to engage with them.
The chatbot technology is more responsive than ever, meaning you can create sophisticated algorithms to drive chatbots that will talk to your customers as if you are personally dealing with each question. You never miss an inquiry, all customers are answered and happy, and your staff can focus on tasks that really need their direct attention.
Optimise Your Targeting and Posting Schedules to Get More Out of Your Video Marketing
Everyone is doing their best to make video marketing work. However, you need to remember that social media users are bombarded with video content all day long, everything from ads to cat videos. You can’t compete by throwing your carefully created visual media into the “general population” of the social media world. Forget about going viral. Use keywords, good quality and clever timing to hit the right audience.
Use Facebook Custom Audience for Precise Targeting
Facebook’s Custom Audience feature is something you should absolutely be using by now. If you aren’t yet, then look into it right away! It is the best way to make your PPC spending worthwhile because it enables you to target your advertising specifically at those people most likely to convert their clicks into sales.
Say, for instance, you put out an ad that receives a high number of clicks from women aged between 20 and 25. The response from this group is huge but, unfortunately, few of those clicks (each of which you’re paying for, by the way) have been converted into sales. You find instead that men aged between 30 and 35, although fewer of them click, render many more conversions. With Facebook Custom Audience, you can then eliminate the non-converting group and target the converting group alone, maximising your spending and making more sales.
Invest in Short-Lived Content That Drives Immediate Engagement
Many social marketers have scratched their heads wondering how to make content that lasts on platforms where each post only has a lifespan of a few minutes. The approach now is to go the other way. Nobody is going to scroll back through their feed or search to find a story you posted yesterday. So, why not rather create content that appears, makes a strong impression and then expires. This will generate engagement and drive users to your website if they want more information. Fleeting, yet tantalising content is the way to go.
Voice Search Is on a rapid Rise. Take Advantage!
The ascent of voice search means that you should start shifting your content mix on social media towards a higher proportion of audio and video, as opposed to text. How-to videos, podcasts and the like, will all be valuable to you as more people adapt to hands-free and reading-free searches
Track Your Conversions and Use the Data to Tweak Accordingly
In order to make targeted marketing work, you have to track your clicks and conversions carefully. Facebook Custom Audience, for example, can only work if you have done all your homework. Set specific social media marketing goals and then measure your results against them with as much accuracy as possible. You can then constantly tweak your tactics to hit the targets better.
WSI OMS specialises in developing social media marketing strategies that adapt to the changing demands of the market and which align with your overall marketing goals. Contact us for help on how to develop your own winning social media marketing strategies.
by Francois Muscat | Jan 23, 2020 | Instagram, Social Media Marketing
Instagram’s introduction of its Checkout feature added a new tool that online retailers can use to monetise their hordes of followers on the popular social platform. If you’ve yet to put the feature to use, this blog is a gentle introduction to its range of benefits.
Enables Consumers to Complete Purchases Without Leaving the App
Checkout on Instagram enables consumers to complete purchases in the app, without having to be redirected to the seller’s website. This would promote Instagram from a social media platform to a centralised online marketplace where an unlimited number of brands can make sales quickly and easily – on the spot.
When a user taps to view a product that interests them, the “Checkout on Instagram” button comes up, and they can complete the transaction right there if they choose. Not only will payment take place within Instagram, but also after-sales services such as tracking of orders. First-time users will have to enter billing and delivery information, much as they would on any other shopping site. These details are then saved for later use, regardless of the number and variety of sellers they buy from.
Lower Traffic to Your Site Is Offset By Quicker Conversions
This may present both good and bad possibilities for you as an online business operator. On the one hand, it could mean a reduction in traffic going through to your website from Instagram. But, on the other hand, it would make for quicker conversions – and thus possibly even an increase in conversions over time. It cuts out all intermediate steps, meaning you get a more immediate sale.
According to Instagram’s stats, 60% of users discover new products on the platform, making it a very useful promotional method. It now goes one step further, because it not only promotes the product, it can close the sale too.
The service is currently in closed beta testing, rolled out to a select few brands earmarked by Instagram. Once it rolls out of beta in general use, it is not certain what the cost of the service will be to retailers. But, it seems likely to be worth the expense. We’ll be sure to keep you posted.
Thinking of adding Instagram to your suite of social media marketing platforms? The platform’s new Checkout feature, which is still in beta, is one of many features that appeal to online marketers. Contact WSI OMS today to learn how you can put Instagram’s powerful marketing features to use.
by Francois Muscat | Jan 6, 2020 | Facebook, Social Media Marketing
Holidays are a good time to boost sales for your business as consumers find it easier to justify purchases around holidays than at most other times. But, with every other business targeting the same holiday periods with offers, standing out from all the noise can prove challenging. Smart marketers are leveraging the power of social media marketing. And, Facebook Advertising, in particular, to position their brands in front of target customers. Here are the top six benefits of using Facebook Advertising to boost your holiday marketing efforts:
It Puts Your Brand and Marketing Messages in Front of More People
People are always on the look-out for great deals on gifts throughout the festive season. So, by enhancing your reach through paid advertising on Facebook, you are certain to generate a much higher number of website visitors and, hopefully, conversions.
It Helps You Target the Right People
You can ensure that your marketing budget is well-spent with Facebook’s accurate targeting options. Target by gender, age, interests and more.
It Gives You More Ad Formats to Test With
From canvas ads to slideshow ads and everything in between, the Facebook advertising platform has gone out of its way to allow marketers to really get creative.
It Enables You to Compete with the Bigger Players in Your Niche
Why should you consider running Facebook ads during the holidays? Because you can be 100% certain that your competition is! The only way to keep up is to follow suit – and do it better.
It Spreads Your Marketing Messages During a Time People Are Most Likely to Buy
At any other time of the year, people will think twice before purchasing something – even if it is offered to them at a decent price. During the holidays, however, people are ready and often looking to make a purchase. Entice them with a worthwhile offer, and you are highly likely to convert them with minimal effort or spend.
Gives You the Tools to Set Your Own Budget and Track How You’re Spending It
Facebook advertising allows you to choose your budget from the get-go, so you are always aware of what you are spending.
Facebook Advertising has some of the highest conversion rates in online marketing. If you aren’t yet, it is high time you put them to work in your business. With our expertise and years of experience with online reputation management, digital marketing, and social media marketing, at WSI OMS we are the perfect people with work if you’re looking to make ground quickly. Contact us to discuss your needs.
