Modern Social Media Marketing

The laws that underlie successful business practices are foundational and do not change. What does change, however, is the context in which they must be applied. Many traditional marketing strategies now experience diminishing returns in digital spaces. Why is this? It’s likely to do with the fact that the way people relate to, and access, content has changed markedly over the past 10 years with the growth and development of social media, and the increased uptake of smartphone usage globally. Any cutting-edge marketing strategy must take these changes into account and look for ways to leverage them to work in your favor.

Below we take a look at some of the new principles that modern, social media aware marketing campaigns should utilize if they want to increase their digital footfall, and convert their advertising investment into concrete sales.

Freemium

Many of the most successful brands operating today in our modern connected environment recognize that furnishing their customers with limited access and special deals is an incredibly successful way to grow their businesses. Free trials take many forms. The popular freemium model, for example, locks certain premium features away behind a pay-wall, but lets users try out the software or product by giving them provisional access to basic features. Often, this is enough to let a user decide whether it will be worth their money to upgrade and buy the full product. This type of model is particularly successful in the realm of app design.

Free Trials

Other sectors, such as the video game industry, utilize other forms of trial periods to encourage uptake. For example, EA recently kicked off their release of the multiplayer arena game Knock-Out City by letting users download the full game, for free, for a month. By letting users play the game for an extended, but limited, period of time, they can test out the gameplay experience. In doing so, those who are most likely to enjoy and buy the game have already begun to invest time and energy into it making them much likelier to support the game long-term.

Limited Promotions

Other organizations, such as iGaming platforms, host offers for their patrons on activities such as slots titles, with free spins and welcome bonuses among the promotions used to invite players. This works in a similar fashion to the free trials mentioned above, insofar as it lets players experience the product free of charge, in the expectation that they will be likelier to pay for it in the future.

Organic Marketing

One of the most effective ways to make social media work for you is by getting your customers to do the advertising for you. Most commonly this takes the form of hosting giveaways and competitions for your products and services. Typically, the conditions outlined for entry into the competition are that your followers should like, comment and, crucially, share the competition post to their own feeds. By doing so, each person who enters your competition will have made their entire friends-list aware of your brand.

Of those who see this post, a certain percentage will, themselves, enter the competition, further increasing the reach of your marketing and connecting you organically with new customers who are interested in your organization. This can be augmented by making your mission statement and values readily accessible, so prospective consumers can know quickly whether they resonate with your brand.

Targeted Advertising

While organic marketing is very effective, it must be used in conjunction with other strategies in order to make the most of your social media campaigns. If you want to target a specific demographic with a high level of precision, you should consider using targeted advertising. The major social connected platforms on the internet, from Google to Facebook, all generate their revenue by selling advertising data to brands and organizations. This is because these platforms harvest unparalleled amounts of information about their users which can be used for marketing purposes. By paying for targeted advertising, you can be sure that your products or services get discovered by exactly the type of person you’re hoping to target.