Social media marketing is a broad term that encompasses many different techniques to build your brand and expand your reach. You can use several different strategies to market your brand on social media, giving you plenty of options for implementation based on your situation and needs. There are many different ways to use social media to help grow your business. But which one is best for you?

Social media is a big world with lots of little niches. Within each niche, there are additional sub-niches—and so on. There's a lot to unpack! Every company needs a strategy before diving in headfirst with social media marketing. Here we will discuss the various types of social media marketing strategies, the pros and cons, and examples of using them successfully.

Different types of social media marketing strategies

Social media marketing can be a powerful way to reach your audience, but it's essential to have a plan before you start. You can use several different social media marketing strategies, but each one has its benefits and drawbacks.

Content Marketing Strategy

Content is king, and if you want to be successful in social media marketing, you need to create high-quality content that will engage your audience and help them achieve their goals. It could be anything from articles to videos or even memes. The type of content you choose should depend on your audience and what they're looking for in a particular platform.

Content marketing aims to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.

For example, if I'm trying to market my business on LinkedIn, I'll focus on providing articles with information about my industry. If I'm trying to sell my business on Twitter, I'll focus on creating funny tweets that users can retweet or favorite. The key here is knowing your audience and giving them what they want!

Pros:

  • Builds trust with your audience by providing valuable content that they can learn from or enjoy.

  • Enhances your brand's reputation and increases its visibility online.

  • It's an opportunity to educate people about your product or service using helpful tips, articles, or videos instead of sales pitches.

  • It allows you to build relationships with customers and influencers who might help promote your business later on down the road once their trust has been built over time through consistent contact with them via social media posts and emails.

Cons:

  • Creating valuable content takes time and effort (and sometimes money).

  • People may not trust your brand because it's new to their eyes (even if it's not).

Social Ads Strategy

Social ads are a subset of banner ads designed for social media platforms. They appear when users scroll through their newsfeeds. These ads allow businesses to target specific consumers by demographics and interests, similar to how traditional display advertising works. The downside of this strategy is that you don't have control over the environment in which your ads appear. You also don't control whether it will associate your brand with other brands or content you'd rather avoid.

For example, if you're selling luxury products and an ad for a trendy fast-food joint pops up on someone's feed, it can negatively impact your brand image.

Pros:

  • Target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.

  • You can use all of your email marketing software tools (the same ones you use for email marketing).

Cons:

  • It can be challenging to measure the ROI of social ads and determine how much traffic they are getting from each ad campaign because there are no built-in tracking codes.

Video Marketing Strategy

Video marketing is one of the most effective forms of social media marketing because it can help you connect with your audience more personally than other types of content. When done right, videos can increase engagement, boost brand awareness and drive more traffic to your website or blog.

Video marketing also works well as part of an integrated marketing campaign that includes other types of content such as blog posts, podcasts, and infographics. For example, if you create a video blog post about how to create infographics, then use that post as part of an integrated campaign by posting the infographic on your website and sharing it on social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook.

While video marketing can be effective on its own, it's even more powerful when combined with other strategies such as live streaming, which can help you reach a larger audience.

Pros:

  • Video content is more engaging and leads to a better user experience.

  • Video content can go viral, which means it has a higher chance of reaching a larger audience.

  • Video content is easier to share on social media platforms.

Cons:

  • You may need to hire a professional videographer or video editor to create high-quality videos for your brand.

  • You need more time and money to produce videos than text-based posts or photos (especially if you want to make them look professional).

Influencer Marketing Strategy

Influencers are people with large audiences on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. They're typically celebrities or famous bloggers who have built their following through hard work, original content, and consistency. Influencers can be paid or unpaid — it depends on the agreement between you and them. You could also hire influencers to create content for you or pay them for promotion on their channels.

For example, if you're launching a new product line, you might hire an influencer to post about it on her channel in exchange for free products. This strategy can effectively increase awareness of your brand among critical demographics (in this case, people interested in fashion).

Pros:

  • Influencers can help you reach new customers who aren't already familiar with your brand.

  • Influencers can create content that resonates with their followers and engages them in ways other forms of advertising can't do (for example, influencers can post pictures or videos that show how to use your product).

  • Brands can track the performance of influencer campaigns better than other forms of advertising because they know precisely where the traffic came from (an influencer's social media page).

Cons:

  • Influencers can be expensive to work with.

  • Influencers can be challenging to manage because they have their audiences and agendas.

Native Advertising Strategy

Native advertising is a form of online advertising that blends in with the content surrounding it and is not easily distinguishable from this other material. Native ads can be text, images, video, or audio and come in many different forms, including sponsored posts, promoted posts, and advertorials.

The primary purpose of native advertising is to create a more engaging experience for users by providing them with relevant information that they would find valuable while browsing the web. Many large companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have used this type of advertising to increase their reach and engagement on their platforms.

Example: Brands can create unique content to share on social media channels. It can include infographics, videos, photos, etc., as long as it's relevant to their target audience and product/service offering.

Pros:

  • Native advertising is proven to be more effective than traditional ads.

  • It is cheaper than traditional ads.

  • It helps build trust between your brand and your audience.

Cons:

  • This strategy is not going to help your SEO in any way.

  • It's not a long-term strategy; it is only helpful in the short term.

  • It doesn't help build relationships with customers or increase engagement with your brand on social media platforms.

Slack Ads Strategy

Slack is a messaging app that allows teams to communicate efficiently. It's popular among businesses and freelancers because it will enable them to communicate efficiently without using emails or phone calls.

The Slack Ads Strategy has allowed brands such as Dockers, Red Bull and Vogue to grow their business by engaging with their audience through the platform. They have been able to do this by creating custom channels targeted toward their target audience.

Pros:

  • Easy to understand, easy to use

  • Slack has the largest audience globally, with over 10 million daily active users.

  • It is a very effective marketing tool for startups because it is inexpensive and easy to use. You can create a campaign in minutes, and you don't have to worry about making a website or landing page.

Cons:

  • Limited targeting options due to the nature of the platform.

  • They may be difficult for some people to understand if they aren't familiar with Slack (which is understandable)

Facebook Ads Strategy

Facebook has the most extensive user base in the world. It is an excellent place to start when you want to reach out to customers actively engaging with businesses on Facebook. You can create an ad campaign to target people interested in your product or service. It will help you find new customers and also increase your sales. You can use different targeting options like location, age, gender, interests, etc., to get better results from your campaign on Facebook ads.

Pros:

  • Clickthrough rates are high compared to other platforms (1-3%).

  • A highly targeted audience means less wasted spending on non-relevant people.

  • It can be used to drive traffic to your website or blog post.

Cons:

  • The cost per impression (CPI) may be higher than other platforms because there are fewer users in your potential audience.

Twitter Ads Strategy

Twitter is a viral platform for businesses to advertise on because it allows you to target specific audiences based on their interests or location. A Twitter ads strategy aims to drive website traffic, increase conversions, and boost sales. For example, suppose you're a local business. In that case, you can target people who live near your store by sending them ads about local events or discounts for customers who live within a certain radius of your business. Another way to target specific audiences on Twitter is through keywords. For example, if your company sells yoga gear and apparel, then you could use keywords like "yoga," "meditation," "mindfulness," etc., to reach out to people who might be interested in products like yours.

Pros:

  • It's straightforward to set up and run.

  • You can do it yourself or hire an agency to help you with the process.

  • It's very affordable compared to other platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

  • You can target people based on their interests, location, demographics, etc., which is excellent for targeting particular audiences.

Cons:

  • It's challenging to target only people interested in your product or service. (This is why many brands use Facebook and Instagram ads to complement their Twitter campaigns.)

  • Low clickthrough rate (CTR) on auto-optimize campaigns

Bottom line

Social media marketing is a great way to generate buzz about your product or service. Before you start, you should create goals for your campaign, including who you want to reach, where your future customers will come from, and how much you are willing to spend on the drive. Your budget will be the best way to help set your expectations and goals for social media marketing. Once you decide on how much money you want to spend, it will be easier to select different social media advertising methods that work with your budget.

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