If you’ve followed us on social media for any length of time, you’ll know that we offer training on social media, social media management and also paid social campaigns.
It’s a bit like choosing a car, planning a holiday or changing the look and feel of your kitchen. None of these things happen overnight. They all take time, thought, planning and consideration of a whole host of things.
Social media advertising or paid social, as it’s sometimes called, is a bit the same. Elements of the adverts needs to be considered, it takes time to get everything set up correctly before you start, you need to know what success looks like and you may need to change, tweak and adapt things as you go.
When it comes to the advertising side of things, we want to get the very best results for the client but it can be tricky to get the right outcomes. Ultimately, a client may want to get sales from their website. But this doesn’t happen in the blink of an eye. It’s a staged process.
So in this blog we’ll explain the various different steps to guide prospects through the customer journey of advertising. The idea is to help your prospective clients learn about you, understand what you have to offer, build confidence in your products / service and encourage them to buy from you.
SET YOUR GOALS
Although it’s good to define your goals, and don’t forget these may change and adapt over time. It’s also great to understand who our target audience is, but how does our target audience also become our customer?
To understand that, it is good to put yourselves in the shoes of your customer and the journey they are on.
In our social media advertising we segment into three simple customer journey elements.
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
Awareness – Getting to know you and your brand. This might be measured by the number of impressions (time people have seen your posts) or the reach (how many people have seen a post)
Consideration – People start to know of you and begin to look more into what you do, where you’re based, how you operate. This might be measured by the clicks through to your website, increased number of post likes, page likes, or sign ups to email marketing campaigns.
Conversion – Here people are encouraged to take specific actions. For example more purchases on a website, increase in store visits.
Your target customer is on a journey and ultimately you would like that journey to lead to an action (often this is a purchase but not always). Your marketing or your advertising is meant to help move your target customer along from awareness to consideration and then to conversion.
Marketers will often point to this process as a funnel. That is because, in reality you will often find that in moving from the awareness to the consideration and then the conversion stage, the group of target customers gets smaller. That is a completely normal pattern.
Even if you have selected your target audience really well, it is normal that not all of them will ultimately become your customer. There may be different reasons for that – the time may not be right, they already made up their minds on a competitor, they cannot afford the product right now etc.
So, you will find that not all people who are aware of your product will really consider buying it. And of those people who are considering your product or service, not everyone will convert to becoming your customer.
In the Awareness phase of your customer’s journey, you are hoping to find as many potential customers in your target audience as possible and make them AWARE of your business
After they’ve heard about you, it’s time to for these potential customers to learn more about you and understand why they need your products or services, and that they should really buy it from you. This is the Consideration phase of the journey.
When these potential customers are ready to take action and convert into actual customers, leads, or subscribers this is the conversion phase of the customer journey. We refer to this phase as a conversion, a purchase is one type of conversion and you can define others based on your business.
- Awareness (Get people to be aware of your business):
This category includes objectives that help people remember or learn about your product or service.
For example, A small independent coffee shop we know, Wired Coffee & Cake, Honley wanted to create a campaign that highlights its home-made delicious cakes to people in the local area. The Promote Your Business Locally objective helped them connect with customers nearby.
- Consideration (Get people to consider your business):
This category includes objectives that get people to consider and seek information about your product or service.
For example, a local restaurant we know & use, Mezze a Greek style restaurant in Holmfirth wanted to attract people to its new menu delivery service. The Get More Leads objective can encourage people to sign up for notifications and special promotions of the delivery service.
- Conversions (Get people to take action you care about):
This category includes objectives that encourage people to purchase or use your product or service.
For example, Locums Direct (Locum Optician recruitment app) wants people to download their new app and book locums for their practice. To encourage people, Locum’s Direct could offer £££ off the first order from their delivery service.
Your social media advertising strategy is a fluid and living document that is constantly changing and evolving as you grow. Just as your business changes and adapts over time, so will your advertising. So it goes without saying that you must review your goals to see if they’re still in line with where the business is heading.
Go back to the beginning and revisit the goals you set. Have you achieved what you set out to? If not why not. If you have, what’s the next goals?
As long as you are always focused on your business goals aligned to your business plan and core values, but changing and adapting to get better results each time, you are on the right track!
We know that social media advertising is an absolute minefield, so if you’re still struggling to understand all the ins and outs, then get in touch with Janet and the award winning team here at Social Progress for additional help and support!
Web: www.socialprogress.co.uk Email: info@socialprogress.co.uk Call: 01484 506336