The 4 Elements of an Effective Social Media Strategy

In this article, I’ll walk you through the four essential elements of running an effective social media campaign. But before we begin, we first need to define and understand where social media advertising fits in for the end customer.

While social media advertising can drive conversions, it often doesn’t get the attention it deserves due to the cost-per-click attribution model, which typically attributes the conversion to the last ad the user interacted with before making a purchase. This isn’t ideal, considering that most social media activity happens at the very end of the sales funnel, or is driven by awareness.

This doesn’t mean you can’t structure your campaigns to improve conversion of customers closest to the purchase, although that’s a topic for another article.

When you’re looking to implement an effective social media advertising strategy, there are four specific elements you need to consider. Here they are:

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A few years ago, social media marketing wisdom dictated that we shouldn’t put too much faith in the number of followers you had.

This is partly true – attracting tons of followers just to make a good impression isn’t enough to achieve good sales results. It’s even counterproductive, considering that each social network displays your updates to a certain percentage of your community (this is called reach).

By growing a targeted audience that demonstrates genuine interest in your brand, you’ll see a significant reduction in your advertising costs, better audience engagement, and improved brand authority.

In conclusion, there’s no shame in having a small, engaged community – as long as those followers have a significant impact on your brand’s key performance indicators.

The commitment

Brand engagement is the holy grail of social media marketing – after all, it’s the reason social media exists.

Using social media advertising to promote content to a specific audience can help you ensure you’re delivering the right message to the right people, without having to rely on Facebook’s stupid algorithm (yes, I said it).

The important thing to remember when using social media advertising to create engagement is that engagement isn’t created the same way everywhere. It’s easy to get people to see an attractive, motivating graphic or a fun video; however, it’s much harder to get people’s attention with content that truly speaks to what your brand offers.

Personally, I’d say you need a bit of both—however, you should focus your advertising budget on content that generates organic traffic. This content will grow significantly when you spend a few dollars on it.

Clicks on your website

A social media advertising campaign that drives highly targeted traffic to your website is, in my opinion, the best source of sales results.

Certainly, the other elements are important; however, to improve conversion, it is necessary to draw users away from Facebook and onto your own site (unless, of course, you are working on Lead Ads).

Nearly all social media platforms now have powerful targeting options that allow you to attract the customers you’re targeting. Since social media traffic typically has higher bounce rates, shorter average time spent on site, and fewer page views than other digital advertising strategies, it’s crucial to consistently attract new users to your website and marketing funnels.

Retargeting

Typically, a user sees your ad on social media, clicks, navigates to your site, then gets distracted by something else and leaves your site – turning off their phone or computer.

This is where retargeting comes in. By placing a pixel on your website, email list, or video views, you can continue to display your ads to those users who have shown clear intent toward your site (or content) but haven’t converted. This strategy is ideal for making users remember your brand, while also being highly cost-effective. We therefore highly recommend leveraging retargeting in your social media advertising strategy.

The great thing about social media marketing is that there are always new tactics to try and new strategies to test. The scariest part, however, is that it requires a budget and a lot of time.

If you’re trying to build a solid foundation for your social media strategy, these four elements will set you up for success.

For Facebook fans, you can also turn to productivity tools like Vaka for social media management or AdExpresso to set up in-depth Facebook advertising campaigns in just a few clicks (long live AI).