With the rise of technologically enabled business processes, that saw rapid adoption across sectors during the pandemic, digital, and social media marketing have also found widespread recognition and acceptance. Being a largely visual media, creating social media profiles of a brand and its spokes-person, is now synonymous to what websites were a few years ago – a primary and easily accessible digital identity. Although digital and social media penetration in India has been steadily increasing over the decade, and India continues to remain a major market for key social media platforms, their role in marketing and creating widespread brand awareness have only now been accepted as mainstream marketing initiatives, as against a value add, a few years ago.
With factors like global reach, ability to geo-target and micromanage a campaign real time to allowing dynamic consumer interaction and engagement, social media marketing has redefined brand communications and consumer interactions drastically. It is not a surprise now, that Digital and Social Media marketing have become synonymous to business growth in modern times. Marketers today are looking at these platforms to not only create brand visibility, awareness, reach, traffic to website, lead and revenue generation opportunities, or community engagement, but also to mine precious consumer behaviour data and spending patterns, pilot product test runs, experiment with innovative campaign strategies and much more!Â
An effective social media strategy would ideally be based on mapping the clients requirement, exploring the best format and platform of engagement and drawing up ROI or success metrics based campaign. Some key insights, in the form of data like Reach, Clicks, Engagement, Hashtag performance, Organic and Paid Likes, Sentiments, Leads, Conversions, Sales and Repeat Purchases (in terms customer retention and loyalty), can offer a rich canvas for brands to not only create winning social media engagement plans but to also get real, genuine consumer feedback about their products and services. Further, aligning all the offerings of the business based on the respective Social Media channels and Digital platforms, one can measure the results as per the business objectives and deliverables decided upon in a time bound and cost bound manner. Finally, the monitoring and competition analysis come into picture where platform insight tools and 3rd party tools can be handful to gage how the campaign or the communication has performed vis a vis competition and mutually decided objectives for the respective business.
Effective digital and social media marketing protocols involves creating a brand presence across relevant media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Blogging sites, Digital PR sites, and using digital marketing and social media marketing tools like Google AdWords, Google Display Network, ROS and RON sites etc. A seasoned social media consultant could help draw up the most effective social media strategy to help brands engage with followers and stakeholders through rich and engaging content, run cross channel promotions and enhancing spokesperson visibility through live sessions on Instagram. Ideally, the best social and digital marketing campaigns are designed based on a set of S.M.A.R.T business goals, which comprise of factors like specific audience mapping, measurable outcomes, attainable and realistic goals, relevant and real time content creation.
One of the manners in which specialised social media consultants can help brands leverage the new age platforms for digital marketing, is by evaluating the value proposition, business and communication goals, and drive impact. For example, in case of LinkedIn, a well drafted and executed campaign can help drive traffic to the company website, and help measure click-throughs. If Instagram is for brand awareness, one can easily track the number of Instagram Story views. And if you advertise on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a common success metric.
