Social media campaigns either drive sales or boost your popularity. As such, all entrepreneurs understand that social media is an integral part of marketing.
But what should you do to make them work? Today, I will show you how to quickly improve results from your social media campaigns.
These things are:
- Tweaking your audience or demographics
- Working with influencers
- Encouraging user-generated content
- Using a hook, story, offer
As you can see, some of these techniques apply to ads, and some apply to posts. Regardless of the type of campaign you are doing, you can use several of these to boost your campaign results.
Tweaking Your Audience or Demographics
The most common reason why nobody is engaging with your post is that you are showing the ad to the wrong people. If you posted your ad and just randomly selected a demographic because you believe that it is the right audience, it is not going to yield results.
One thing that many advertisers miss is the “interest” part of the demographics. In the “interest” area, you can choose specific areas in the social media sphere that people follow.
For example, let us say that your ad is about blogging. As such, you need to type “blogging” in the interest field. If you select this interest, your ad will show to people who are interested in blogging.
So, what happens?
What happens is that your ad is shown to people who do not just meet basic demographic, but people who are specifically interested in blogging.
Here s a typical selection of demographics:
- Location – California
- Age – 25 to 45
- Gender – male and female
- Interest – blogging
As you can see, this ad will be shown to people who meet all these criteria. If you do not use the right “interest”, the ad will be shown to people who are in California, aged 25 to 45, and both male and female. The problem with this campaign is it does not target people who are interested in blogging.
As such, you cannot expect a good turnout in engagement because the ad may be shown to the three demographic groups, but they are not necessarily interested in blogging.
Working With Influencers
The next thing you can do to quickly improve your campaign results is by working with influencers. An influencer is a person on social media who has a following, and there are three main types of influencers.
- Micro-influencers – people who have a following of 1,000 people or less
- Macro-influencers – people who have a following of 100,000 people or more
- Celebrities – people who have a following of 1 million people or more
Depending on the size of your business, you must target these influencers who can promote your brand. What you need to do is to reach out to them, and then make them an offer.
In return, they will give a shoutout to their followers.
Isn’t this ironic? you might ask. Why would they endorse you if they are in the same field? Well, it does not work that way. You have to find influencers in a niche that covers yours.
For example, let us say that your campaign is about health and you sell vitamins or meal replacement shakes. In this case, you need to look for influencers who are in the health space, not influencers selling their own health products.
Look for an influencer who is teaching people how to build healthier bodies. Send him your product, and then ask what it would take for him to promote it. The cost if this is not known, as it varies from one influencer to another.
Encouraging User-Generated Content
User-generated content is what makes a buzz on social media. What this means is that you can ask people who saw your ad or post to get engaged.
Why is this important?
You see, people simply do not trust markets. They trust people. User-generated content or UGC is a good indication of brand success.
Here are some ways you can encourage UGC:
- Ask them to caption a photo
- Ask them to post photos of themselves with your product
- Ask them to participate in a drive
- Ask them to join contests
UGC is going to save you a lot of money—the people are the ones creating content for you, and you get free publicity. In the UGC drive, you can create a hashtag and tell people to post their photos and use the hashtag. If they do it, promise them that you will donate a portion of your earnings to a specific cause.
Using Hook, Story, Offer
The hook, story, offer is a sales technique where you use baits. The bait is a text or an image that makes a person curious. Because of this curiosity, the viewer is “forced” to click on your post or ad to see more details.
Once the viewer clicks on the post, he is going to share a story—a life story of someone who has relevant things to share. As the viewer reads this story, he will be able to relate to the issue, and then you can make your offer.
The HSO approach usually starts with a statement. This statement must say something about a problem—a problem that you can fix.
Here are some examples of a hook: “Only one out of ten people succeed in the dropshipping business, and here is why.”
As you can see, that hook is intended for people who are interested in dropshipping. The hook is carefully crafted for that kind of audience. Also, the hook presents a problem with subtlety—that only 10% of people succeed in dropshipping.
Now, if a person interested in dropshipping sees that hook, he will click on it. The next part of this process is to show the reader a story—the reasons why people fail at dropshipping.
After reading the story, the viewer knows that the source of this story is a credible organization. Also, the story itself has helped him understand that you have a solution to his problem. After reading the story, you need to proceed in making the offer.
You need a good copywriter to create a hook, story, offer. Most of the time, this whole three-step process is about creating a sales funnel, specifically used for ads that lead to landing pages. The final goal is not just to improve social media engagement, but also to boost the conversion rate.
Summary
If your social media campaigns or ads are not generating the desired result, you need to come to terms that something isn’t right. This is why many marketers always use the A/B split test—they create two versions of the same campaign, and then launch both with a small budget.
Once they have seen which ad is getting better results, that is the only time they increase their ad spend. For posts, you need to take a hard look at the content of what you have posted. Put yourself in the position of the viewer, and then ask if you have a reason to follow or like this post.
There is not a secret sauce or magic recipe for successful media campaigns. What we have are basic standards—marketing on social media is a changing landscape; you have to be socially aware and make that awareness work for you.
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