How to Create the Ultimate Customer-First Social Media Marketing Strategy

Creating an effective SMM strategy requires careful considerations, execution plans, and management of your content on social media platforms.

This master plan guides your actions and allows you to see whether you're succeeding or failing. The plan has to be clear and concise, not too broad or so challenging that you can't measure or reach it.

After reading this piece of content, you will be able to execute an effective customer-first social media marketing strategy. Let's get to it.

Creating an ultimate customer-first social media marketing strategy

• Step 1: Highlight goals and align them with your branding

  

  Maintaining a customer-first social media strategy starts with defining your goals. Articulating what you want from social media can lead you to find your answer.

  Having a set of goals that guide your SMM strategy helps you to understand how much time and energy you'll need to invest in your campaigns. Your objectives should be specific, attainable, measurable, and realistic.

  Setting marketing goals can be valuable when working towards achieving success in your business. These objectives will help shape your actions and make sure you attain the desired outcomes.

  Below are some goals that businesses should try to achieve when running social media marketing campaigns for their customers:

  • 1. Increasing brand awareness

    This is how you promote your brand. To create authentic and lasting brand awareness, avoid publishing only promotional messages. Focus on engaging content that reflects what your brand stands for, as well. This goal seeks to find new followers, by introducing your brand to those who had not heard of it before.

  • 2. Generating leads and sales

    This marketing goal can be accomplished through different methods, including using social media or advertising online. Followers don't buy things without paying attention in the first place, so keep your posts interesting and explore lead generation strategies to upsurge sales.

    For example, are you making new products and promos known to customers? Are you integrating a product catalog into your social profiles? Are you running exclusive deals for followers?

  • 3. Driving traffic to your site

    You can render traffic to your landing pages through social media. Keep an eye on the ROI of your campaign, checking for conversion rates and URL clicks.

    Note: Resolving to focus on one or two social media marketing objectives can go a long way in selecting the networks that you should use. You can then develop simple strategies rather than trying to tackle too many objectives, which might otherwise distract you.

• Step 2: Employ market surveys

  

  Don't make assumptions about the needs and tastes of your customers. Research as much as you can about them so you can get a clear picture of their needs and desired outcomes.

  Lots of the research involved in devising an effective social media marketing strategy is to determine information about your customer base. Understand their demographics, behaviors, and attitudes to undertake an audit of their key influences.

  This is why marketers increasingly need specialized research tools. You can sort out unnecessary information and find what you need much more efficiently.

  Keep note of…

  • Your audience’s tastes, age range, locations, and other demographics

  • What’s working and what’s not

  • Who is engaging with your content

  • The networks your target markets use the most

  • How your social media presence holds up against the competition

  Be sure to comb through the networks your target audience is already on and be familiar with what they're looking for in a brand like yours.

  Revisit their pain points and think of how you could provide solutions to their challenges. Taking in what your customers want and then customizing and personalizing your content can help resonate with them more.

• Step 3: Practice competitive intelligence

  

  Since there are plenty of established businesses in your industry, the key to success is standing out. This doesn't mean bringing other companies down - instead, take these three steps to make your company unique:

  • 1. Carry out a competitive analysis

    A good way to get a deeper market understanding is to analyze competing or remotely similar brands. This allows you to understand who your competitors are and what they’re good or bad at. This should then help you map out clear goals for your social media marketing and potential targets if needed.

  • 2. Compare and contrast

    After identifying some of your company's competitors, compile the analysis information, including info about who they are, how many customers they have, and other details. Compare these stats to ones from your own company.

    Try looking into what your competitors are doing on social media. Contrast their engagement with yours, seeing how they engage more with followers and what hashtags they use on their posts. You can then get an idea of how you can implement similar strategies.

• Step 4: Create informative content for your audience

  By publishing high-quality content on your social pages, you will naturally attract more engagements and followers. Try utilizing the 80-20 rule:

  • About 80% of your social media posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience; while

  • The remaining 20% can directly promote your brand, product, or offer.

  To drive maximum engagement, you should always have a plan in place before sharing your content. The more quickly you react, the more engagement you will attract.

• Step 5: Give quick responses

  

  Your social availability has never been more important, mainly because of the customer expectations you must meet in 2022 and beyond. Apart from creating fresh content regularly on your social platforms, you must be "on" for customers almost 24/7.

  It's important to account for the time your brand will be available to engage with customers so you can plan and produce adequately for what they need.

  If you don't respond to customers' concerns on social media, there's no point in posting at all. Make sure you—or your marketer/manager—are easily accessible to address any issues or answer questions about your product or service.

  Being present on various social media channels and responding to your audience as quickly as possible will help you build a respectable brand.

• Step 6: Evaluate your progress

  

  You can't run an advertising or marketing campaign without setting specific performance indicators. Aim to use your overarching business objectives as your foundation for setting KPIs, so you'll have a better idea of what's going right or wrong and focus on the proper channels to distribute content.

  For instance, sales conversions are just one of many metrics. You'll need to track many different metiers to get the best picture of what's going on. This means you’ll have to think about a range of metrics to follow so that your decisions are based on the most accurate information.

  It’s noteworthy to regularly check on your social media content. Doing this will help you maintain traffic and ranking while also ensuring that your feeds are fresh and up to date.

Conclusion

This guide has highlighted the need to have a strong social presence in today's modern world. Building a powerful presence on social media can be challenging, but it’s possible with the steps above.

If you set achievable goals and consistently work towards them, you’ll always stay ahead and your strategy should be pretty effective. These tips should help increase engagement and grow your following.