MSI

7 Ways to Make Your Social Media Marketing More EffectiveSince integrating soical media into your marketing mix helps expand your reach, increase sales, and build your fan base, it's important to maximize your soical media marketing's efficiency. Here are seven tactics to help achieve this:Include a call to action. Once you have your prospect's attention, what do you want them to do next? While every marketer will say buy, consider where you are in building your relationship and where the potential customer is in terms of her purchase process. Traditionally, direct marketers focus on purchase-related calls to action; with soical media, calls to action can comprise a broader array of options such as likes, soical sharing, comments, reviews, and RSS feeds. To improve tracking, especially for price deals, include a promotional code that's associated with the original media source. Even though today's consumers are more likely to share offers with broader audiences, you can still determine which source initiated the sale.Provide at least one response channel for participants. This channel should encourage participants to take an action that leads toward greater engagement with your firm. Think broadly in terms of likes, follows, check-ins, and RSS feeds. Also provide an alternative where they can reach a form of customer service such as old-fashioned phone calls, e-mail, and chat. (Here are more options for customer service via soical media.) It's critical to make sure that you're staffed to respond to these inquiries, since they come from interested prospects.Include post-interaction marketing. Because the purchase process may take time, it's important to stay top of mind with prospects. This is especially true in the current environment where the purchase process takes longer and is more soical. You need to have on-going communications and interactions to convert prospects into customers. Ideally, this should continue beyond the actual purchase.Audience. Are you reaching your target audience in terms of prospects, customers, influencers, and the general public? In terms of earned media, how has your reach been extended through the use of soical media marketing?Interactions. Track these in terms of views, shares across soical networks, likes, and comments. Have they increased with the use of the calls to action and promotional codes?Brand perception. How has sentiment towards your brand changed as a result of your soical media marketing? How does this relate to intent to purchase? If it isn't positive, what can you do to improve it?Expenses. Calculate expenses in terms of marketing executions, creative, technology, and head count. Remember, soical media costs more than you think, so include the hidden cost factors as well.Sales. Track sales related to specific calls to action and promotional codes as well as soical media's contribution to brand favorability, prospect acquisition, and post-sale retention.While it's important to be where your target audience is, soical media platforms can be a double-edged sword. You and your fans can promote your offering while new options are introduced that may sway consumers towards other options. Therefore, you must incorporate soical media marketing into your overall marketing plan, include ways to make it more effective, and track results.