“Despite Margots’ attempts to develop a marketing plan that identifies the target audience and defines the most effective communication strategy Hugo is impatient and thinks marketing is all about social media and nothing else”.

Let’s be clear here – social media is part of our lives and influences our buying behaviour. It’s one of the most valuable tools in the marketing communications planning strategy.

Why do most companies or social media specialist fail even before they start a campaign?

The three avoidable reasons for failure are: –

• No original content.
• No communication strategy in place.
• No alignment of the social media campaign with other marketing activities.

Social media is widely viewed and accepted as an important tool for the marketeer. Poor marketeers however view social media as justifying to the business or clients that “we are actively marketing” on your behalf. Its instant visibility is proof of activity.

This approach will often lead to poor content and confusing messages. In most cases it will lead to no content.

To avoid this classic error, you should always start with your “Marketing Plan”. This will define your strategy for promoting your message to your target customer. Next it’s the time to work out what they need to see or hear from you.

It is often quoted that 50% of all marketing spend is wasted – but which 50%. Marketing is almost a science which is trying to calculate what will sell to your target market.

To avoid failing before you even start you need to do 5 simple things before you press send on your social media campaign.

• Plan your social media campaign for 6 months in advance and make sure your content is ready.
• Map your social media campaign alongside other events in your promotional calendar.
• Synchronize your social media campaign content with other planned promotional activity in the year.
• Align the social media message with other advertising and PR campaigns so that the target customer is clear on what you are promoting.
• Measure the results. Marketing is about increasing sales and you need to evidence that your social media campaign is reaching the defined target market.

E&M Strategic is all about planning your business or marketing strategy. Our advice to clients is to ensure the business is on board with the strategy before you hit the spend key in the marketing budget.

If this article has been of help or you would like to comment, please do so or contact us about how we can help get the most out of your social media campaign.