Know your market, make your sale

Published On: February 8, 2016Categories: Management, Resources

Social media is a tool that can directly tie conversions to the efforts you set aside to utilize its potential. There are two main sectors of social media that businesses of all sizes can utilize to market their products and services: organic and paid.

“Organic social” is the free, content side of social media. The daily posting, the engagement with your followers, the sharing of relevant topics, the linking to your website, etc. Organic social allows companies to build their brand, as well as relationships with their current and future customers. The strategy and type of posting a business employs here gives followers a feel for the personality of the business.

As Cruz Buchanan, digital marketing specialist at Venta Marketing in Columbia, Mo., explains, “paid social” is fairly self-explanatory, but its efforts and outputs can be endless. The paid social media giant right now is clearly Facebook—although Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest are growing.

“Their ‘Business Facebook’ site gives businesses access to tools that help develop ad copy, create campaign goals, allocate budget, and identify an audience,” Buchanan says. “The more effort and research a company puts into identifying their audience and allocating marketing budget, the more potential their campaign has to have high returns and conversion numbers.”

As organic traffic increases and you are seeing more engagement, it will be time to look into paid advertising. Every successful business should already have identified its target audience, and this step will help greatly in paid advertising. If you can identify that your target market is “Males in ‘X’ state that are 30-plus, home owners, interested in sports, and have a family-based household”—or whatever your market is—you will be way ahead of the game.

“Now instead of paying to put your ad in front of the largest amount of people, you will be ensuring that people who are most likely to relate to your business, are seeing your ads and having the chance to convert,” Buchanan says. Make sure the goal of your ad is clearly identified. If you want increased website clicks, make sure the link works properly. If you want lead generations, make sure the landing page to which the ad takes them is appealing and functioning properly.

“Whatever you do, make your efforts measurable,” Buchanan says. “Impressions are great for building brand awareness, but what does 200,000 impressions mean if none of those 200,000 purchased something from your business.”

Maura Keller if a freelance writer from Plymouth, Minn.