Social Media Marketing Strategies

As mentioned in the previous post, this post will talk about Social Media Marketing Strategy. Let’s start with understanding why people engage in social media? What’s their motivation?

Why Do People Engage in Social Media?

According to the Guosong Shao in his book “Understanding the Appeal of User‐Generated Media: A Uses and Gratification Perspective. Internet Research“, people use social media for the following: Consumption of information and entertainment, participation in social interaction and community development, and production of self‐expression and self‐actualization. In a simpler form:

1. Information processing
2. Entertainment Activities
3. Social Connection

In an article, “Consumer activity in social media: Managerial approaches to consumers’
social media behavior” by Kristina Heinonen, it gives an even more detailed picture of Social Media Motivators and input behaviours in the conceptual model of consumers’ social media activities as below:

From the table above, we can see that under consumer of Social Media, people use it to also consume, participate and produce according to their their motivation. Hence, when it comes to the target audience we are gunning for via social media, we need to understand why they use it. Then we market our product to them. In this sense, marketing becomes relevant and more attractive to them. Hence, aligning your marketing strategy to this table is important as we want to make sure the advertisement will meet their motivation to be on Social Media.

Developing Strategies

Ever wondered how we should start developing marketing strategies? We have to first understand Customer Value.

Customer Value is the difference between the benefits the customer gains from owning and using a product and the costs of obtaining the product.

-Kotler, Brown, Adam, Burton, Armstrong (2007): Marketing 7e, Pearson Education Australia

According to the book “Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice” by Smith and Colgate, Customer Value can be categorized as follows:

We want to make sure the marketing of our product presents certain values to our customers. It can be Functional, Experiential, Symbolic or Cost Value. Hence, doing research on customer’s demographic before determining the target group is very important. Especially through Social Media, advertisements can be easily ignored. Therefore marketing has to become even more specific, personalized and targeted to reach out more effectively.

With this, we can look at the targeted marketing strategies by Facebook segment by Monica Alexandra Hodis in her artical called “Journal of Marketing Management”:

The table serves as a useful tool for digital marketers to allocate their audience Social Media user types and plan their marketing strategies accordingly. When looking at this table, marketers have to think “What is my user looking for in their social media? Are they trying to consume or create? Where do they stand in the table?”

Many of us find Facebook Advertisements annoying, but there are some that would catch my attention, especially those that stir my emotions and empathy. There was one that showed a family that was tightly knit but suddenly the father passed on and it was an insurance advertisement. Why did that advertisement catch my attention? Personally, I use Social Media for entertainment and connection, and I felt connected to that advertisement content. That advertisement alone gave me an experiential and symbolic value.

10 Simple Social Media Marketing Strategy Steps

1. Set up a digital networking platform for planning
2. Establish a social media budget
3. Establish marketing goal (Raise awareness or Sales etc?)
4. Research and discuss on the target customer group
5. Learn about competitors
6. Conduct Social Media Audit
7. Decide on the kind of value to provide for target customer group (personalized marketing)
8. Come out with content/story/theme and brainstorm ideas for marketing methods
9. Decide on your marketing methods and Social Media platforms to use
10. Set up Social Media Account and Use Brand Advocates

Final Thoughts

Social Media Marketing has become more and more content focused and personalised. It is important that marketers start to look into their customer’s Social Media behaviour, motivation and values to effectively bring value to the customer. After reading this post, do you think there are better strategies to improve Social Media Marketing? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!