78
CANADIAN INDUSTRY ONLINE - APRIL 2014
S
OC I AL MEDI A CONT INUES
to be an important marketing
channel for many businesses. Not only
do thousands of people sign up for
social media services such as Facebook
and Twitter every day, but new social
media sites are constantly being cre-
ated and used.
With the emphasis on social me-
dia marketing and the plethora of sites
to choose from, business owners can
easily get confused or overwhelmed
about how to approach social media
marketing.
For this reason, if a business is go-
ing to use social media to attract cus-
tomers or convert prospects into leads,
it’s vital to have a social media market-
ing plan. This plan can help guide so-
cial media marketing efforts and maxi-
mize the efficiency of the marketing
campaign.
START WITH OBJECTIVES
As with any type of marketing
plan, a social media marketing plan
requires specific, measurable objec-
tives. Some business owners forget this
vital step because social media is new
and different, but in this respect, it
isn’t any different than any other type
of marketing. Before beginning any
type of social media marketing, busi-
ness owners should ask themselves
what their brand hopes to achieve via
its social media presence. Goals and
objectives are often related to raising
brand awareness, generating leads and
converting leads into sales. Business
owners should take some time to flesh
out these goals and make them specific
in order to get the most mileage out of
any social media marketing plan. The
objectives will inform the rest of the
plan, so it is important to take some
time to think about and create them.
Objectives should be written down on
the plan’s first page.
THINK ABOUT WHERE CUSTOMERS
CONGREGATE ONLINE
Any marketing campaign is only
as successful as the number of target
audience members it reaches. Obvi-
ously, if a campaign focuses on adver-
tising in places where target audience
members won’t see it, that campaign
isn’t going to be very successful.
Thus, an important step in the
plan is to determine which social me-
dia sites target the company’s demo-
graphics most frequently. A good way
to do this is to survey existing custom-
ers. Ask them to fill out a brief ques-
tionnaire about their social media hab-
its. In order to get a large number of
responses, it can help to offer an incen-
tive for completing the survey. Survey
results can help determine which so-
cial media sites to focus future market-
ing efforts on.
In addition to choosing the prop-
