Businesses looking for a relatively inexpensive way to reach potential customers find the allure of social media almost irresistible. And rightly so, considering that the social media platform levels the playing field for businesses of all sizes.
While huge companies with equally large advertising budgets can easily outflank small businesses when it comes to traditional marketing campaigns, size and financial resources are of considerably less consequence in the arena of social media.
Sadly, however, not all social media marketing campaigns succeed. Many fall by the wayside because of poor advance planning, amateurish implementation, lack of focus, failure to fully engage with potential customers, and a host of other pitfalls.
To launch a successful marketing campaign on social media, your team should try to avoid some of the following missteps:
Lack of a Well-Defined Goal
Even before you begin drafting a plan for your marketing campaign, you must identify the goal toward which the campaign will be working. For example, is your goal to expand customer service channels, increase product exposure, broaden brand awareness, promote new products, or a combination of two or more goals?
Without a clearly defined target, everybody on your team -- large or small -- is apt to have a somewhat different view of where you're going, and your social media presence will reflect that confusion. Decide exactly where you want to go so that you can create a winning strategy for reaching that goal.
Poor Planning
Just like any successful venture, a social media marketing campaign should be mapped out in advance with contingency plans in place for the various paths the campaign may take. Trying to jerry-rig a marketing program as you go along is almost certain to end in failure.
Your marketing program must be carefully tailored to fit the company, products and/or services it is designed to promote.
Don't try to piggyback your social media campaign onto a model that has proved successful for other companies in the past. You need to develop a marketing program that is unique to your company and its products or services.
Rushing the Hard Sell
If you're only now beginning to stake out your company's presence on one or more social media platforms, take your time so that new followers can become familiar -- and comfortable -- with your brand and your message.
This won't happen overnight and won't be successful if you jump the gun and aggressively push your product line before the public gets to know and trust you.
Inadequate Quality Control
In the headlong rush to establish a social media presence -- which later can serve as a platform for marketing campaigns -- many businesses, small and large, are so desperate to get going that they fail to closely monitor the quality of their content. Nothing is more likely to turn off a prospective follower and potential customer than a social media platform that is poorly conceived and implemented.
Don't use canned copy or poorly written content that is produced in-house. Carefully review copy to ensure that it fits into the goals established for the campaign and is well-written and easily understood.
Lack of Two-Way Communications
The real beauty of social media is its ability to generate a relationship between businesses and their followers or potential customers.
To maximize the benefits of that relationship, you should carefully review comments from your audience and respond in a timely fashion. Hopefully, such outside comments will help your business to shape its online presence so that it provides the maximum benefit to its audience.
Moreover, the dialogue that results will demonstrate an interest on your part in what your customers have to say. Failure to cultivate and maintain two-way communications is a not-so-subtle way of telling customers that you really don't care that much about what they have to say.
Using the Wrong People
Unfortunately, having a Facebook profile or a Twitter account does not qualify a candidate to run a social media marketing campaign.
The failure to select qualified personnel to oversee such campaigns is one of the primary reasons that so many founder. Ideally, you should put the campaign in the hands of staffers who've had previous experience with marketing on social media platforms and who enjoy interacting with people in general and prospective customers in particular.
If you're unable to find someone with experience in social media marketing, select a candidate who can learn the ropes by studying what has worked -- and hasn't -- in the campaigns of others.