Our Digital Marketing Basics series explains common digital marketing concepts in plain English.
Social Media Marketing can be a confusing term for newcomers to digital marketing. There’s often contradictory definitions offered online so, we’re here to offer some clarity on what it is, why you should consider using it as part of your marketing strategy and a super helpful case study showcasing how powerful it can be.
What is social media marketing?
Search Engine Land offers one of the clearest definitions of what social media marketing is:
Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites.
By utilising well-known social channels your brand can achieve incredible things at very little cost. Social media is just that, social. So make sure you’re joining in on the conversation and adding value.
But which channels should you focus on? Depending on your business, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn are the four main channels that you should have a presence on. By producing regular content (i.e. videos, blog posts, inspiring quotes etc.) focused towards your ideal customer you’re increasing your chances of finding that sale, building a relationship and raising awareness around your business. There could be a few different reasons why your business would invest in social media marketing.
Do any of these sound like goals your business is striving towards?
- Raising brand awareness
- Finding & attracting your ideal customer
- Gaining a better understanding of what your customers think about your brand
- Increasing sales of products and services
- Managing customer queries
- Unearthing potential new clients
- Building loyalty between your brand and your customers
By identifying the purpose, or purposes, behind why your brand wants to invest in social media marketing you’ll be able to focus your efforts and see better results. Clear goals are everything.
In the words of Entrepreneur:
“A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy, intended to build a strong brand, has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.”
Now, let’s look at a real-life example of a social media marketing campaign that achieved incredible results.
Social Media Marketing Case Study: UOKM8? Campaign by LADBible
The UOKM8? campaign, launched by the LADbible Group, tackles the stigma surrounding mental health in young men. To generate interest from its target audience, LADBible Group created a series of film shorts named ‘Everyday Heroes’ across all of their channels over the course of three months. The shorts featured inspirational male figures, including Louis Smith (Olympic medalist), detailing their own struggles with mental health. Thanks to honest and inclusive content, a fresh approach on a taboo subject and a killer strategy the campaign saw 823k engagements with a reach of 326 million globally. Which is pretty damn good.
Here are some of the techniques used in the Everyday Heroes campaign that you can emulate in your own business:
- Emotive, beautifully-shot video content.
- Precision posting during peak engagement times.
- Multiple types of content addressing the same subject to achieve a wider reach. (Both editorial and social content was utilised.)
- A dedicated resource hub where the target audience could find further information and get the help they needed.
- Combining offline promotion (posters, stickers) with online promotion (social posts)
- Tapping into a subject that’s in the zeitgeist; mental health is a hot topic that affects a huge portion of LADBible’s audience.
Watch the video:
LADbible Group – UOKM8? Case Study from LADbible Group on Vimeo.
Want to learn more about social media marketing?
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter to get handy content like this on the reg. And, to get a deeper understanding of how content can influence the success of your social channels, read our post ‘Digital Marketing Basics: What is Content Marketing & how does it benefit my business?’.
