Increasing Sales: Social Media Marketing

Brand recognition, product promotion or increase offline and online sales: the solution to any of the tasks is accelerated with the involvement of social media. Created as platforms for communication, today Facebook and VKontakte provide unique opportunities for using marketing tools.

Damir Khalilov, leading expert in social media marketing, founder and CEO of the first Social Media agency in Russia, author of the popular book Social Media Marketing.

Ekaterina Shukalova, Founder and director of the FERT full-cycle Internet agency,

Head of the Training Committee of the Association of Internet Developers, author of training programs "Internet Marketing in Clear Language", organizer of the conference "Information Technologies for the Beauty Industry. Internet" - 2012, author of a number of books and publications on Internet marketing in the industry press.

FERT full-cycle Internet agency
info@fert.ru

About the benefits of internet activity

Experts are confident that presence in social networks is a prerequisite for successful promotion on the sales market. Indeed, the task of any marketing is to be where the audience is, and today they spend a good half of their free time on social networks. The main advantage of social networks is in maximum targeting opportunities: that is, focusing your advertising campaigns on your target audience.

On social media, people self-disclose all their personal information—age, gender, social status, income, occupation, and interests. This allows you to target only those users who best match your target audience. It would be a mistake to think that such tools are only available for promoting large businesses. In recent years, social media has seen a massive influx of small and medium-sized businesses. This presence allows them to quickly address tactical challenges: increasing sales, announcing promotions, and encouraging repeat purchases. Retail is the industry with the highest presence on social media.

Read about the importance of a clear understanding of your CA in times of crisis in the copyright material of Pavel Maestro on page XXX

Offline and online sales: is there a difference in promotion

There are two areas for working with social media: SMO and SMM. The goals of these tools are slightly different:

SMO - Social Media Optimization - Website optimization for promotion on social networks. In this case, the purpose of the promotion is to transfer the user to the site where he must perform the target action: purchase, go to the page, leave his contacts or do something else.

SMM - Social Media Marketing - solving business problems directly in social media, i.e. in this case, work with potential and existing customers can be done WITHOUT a site, only within the framework of social networks. Business tasks are solved directly in social media. Accordingly, if you only have an offline store, no website, then you work only using SMM methods: your tasks include creating a community, maintaining it in an active state, possibly selling within the network itself. But if the offline store is supported by the site, or you have opened online trading, you should use both SMO and SMM tools at the same time.

There is no fundamental difference in SMM work, regardless of whether you have acquired a website or not. However, it is important to remember that you should not start a page for the "tick" just because your competitors are on social media. Any marketing action must be result-oriented.

Hire an agency or do development yourself?

Our expert Ekaterina Shukalova advises not to rush to bring your hard-earned money to a media agency, even the most authoritative and well-known SMM promotion on the market, will require significant time from you. As for financial investments, here you can also save money: “If we are talking about SMM promotion, then a small budget should be spent on

training your own employees to work with social networks; use of special services that will help this employee in their work; in-house social media advertising campaign. With small budgets for SMM, a contractor (SMM agency) can be useful at the stage of drawing up a strategy, i.e. one-time works are carried out with the help of specialists, and then, the company carries out the promotion itself. "

Damir Khalilov. Social Media Marketing. Mann, Ivanov and Ferber Publishing House, 2014.

The first guide to SMM marketing from a Russian practitioner. The book is written on examples from the experience of promotion in RuNet more than 700 companies and brands.

Success Strategy in SMM Promotion

The author of one of the most respected books on social media marketing, Damir Khalilov, provides a step-by-step algorithm according to which you can develop a strategy for promoting a store on social networks.

Step 1. Definition of CA... And again we come back to this question. And it is no coincidence: it is a clear brand positioning designed for a strictly defined audience that will bring success and help increase sales. Characteristic: "Young people with average income, interested in fashion" is not suitable for SMM tasks. “It is important to segment your audience well, to describe each segment with at least 1,5 pages of text,” adds Ekaterina Shukalova. You must take into account all the nuances: place of residence, education, average monthly income, interests. This will determine all your further actions, help you choose a platform for promotion and methods of influencing the target audience.

The number of Facebook subscribers of fashionable clothing and footwear brands (at the time of issue, the number of subscribers could increase)

1. Converse - 39 732 334

2. Nike Football 35 303 978

3. Victoria`s Secret- 23 8170196

4. Adidas Originals 23 120 846

5. Levi's - 21 277 426

6. Zara - 20 810 847

7.H & M - 18 706 112

8. Nike - 17

Advertising

Advertising of Business Global Expo LLC, Taxpayer Identification Number (INN) 7710961530, erid: 2W5zFJRB7Va

9. Burberry - 17 033916

10. Louis Vuitton -16 114 530

Step 2. Identification of key campaign objectives. It is important to ensure that the tasks that you set for the SMM campaign ultimately work for your business goals. So, to increase sales, the task of the SMM campaign will be relevant only if traffic is converted to customers. That is, the audience does not just have to read interesting posts from the history of the store’s creation on your page or consider photographs of new collections, in the end, it must come to your store in order to buy the model you like in the photo.

Step 3. Site selection. Where to direct your efforts and where to look for support from the audience? Every social media has a clear portrait of the average user. “Both VKontakte and Facebook have very clear characteristics of the target audience. You need to go where the audience matches the store's audience as much as possible. It is one thing if we sell luxury shoes, and another thing is democratic sneakers for youth. Those. you have to go from a competent description of the target audience of your own store. " Both VKontakte and Facebook, it is possible to enter the parameters of a specific audience and find out how many registered members correspond to them. This will make the site selection task easier.

In addition, you need to remember about the important format of "circular promotion" for social media. The greater the number of networks from which the user receives information about your brand, your products, the higher the likelihood that he will assimilate it, and, accordingly, will not become one step closer to making a purchase decision. Therefore, it is ideal to be present in all media and be active on all major platforms.

47% of active Internet users surveyed say that the ability to interact with a brand through a social network increases their affection for it. 31% of participants said that they are more likely to purchase the products of a brand that actively communicates on social networks. According to a survey by Havas Worldwide Moscow

Step 4. Determination of the behavioral characteristics of the audience. You need to understand what content will be of interest to your potential customers and what pattern of online behavior is typical for this audience.

There are three main behavioral categories of users:

- passive observers;

- participants in the discussions;

- content generators.

Depending on which category has more representatives in your community, you can, one way or another, adapt your SMM campaign for them.

If the audience is based on generators, you need to create a network of communities, design them, fill them with some initial content, and then users will revive them themselves. If users are participants in discussions, it becomes necessary to conduct community management - to open new topics and give them initial impetus for subsequent discussion. But, as practice shows, most users of social networks are passive observers and you must independently broadcast information and create activity, and the audience will only take note of it. But despite their lack of communication, they are the same buyers as everyone else.

Step 5. Content strategy development. The foundation of promotion is the content you'll publish throughout the campaign. It's impossible to engage users with posts that aren't engaging. "Working with social media doesn't mean publishing information solely about your product range. Furthermore, writing only about your product range is a huge mistake. Imagine inviting people to a party and constantly telling them about the interior design of the venue. When working on social media, you need to understand that you shouldn't mention your product range or discounts more than once every 6-10 posts. You need to talk to people about what excites and interests them, entertaining and informing them. How can you achieve this? When planning your social media promotion, you need to create a list of topics (at least 20) that you'll discuss with people daily. These topics shouldn't be irritating or boring; they should excite, generate genuine interest, and elicit a response. Only then will you find your way to the hearts of your potential and existing clients," explains Ekaterina Shukalova.

It is possible to "drive" the audience to the page only if energy and time are invested in working with social networks. A person who is ready to talk with people, share his knowledge, give advice, participate in people's lives will automatically attract attention to himself, and as a result, the group will grow. However, this is hard work. One should not expect quick results with this approach.

Step 6. Definition of a system of metrics. In order to understand whether the goals set for the campaign are being fulfilled, it is necessary to determine in advance a system of performance indicators (metrics) and focus on them.

Step 7. Definition of resources. Promotion in social networks requires two types of resources - temporary and material. It will be correct if you define your options in advance.

Step 8. Development of a schedule. It is a diagram. In which, in chronological order, dates are assigned for all the main actions, in particular: launch of events (contests, announcements) in each of the networks; deadline for each of the events; schedule of publication of materials; measured by basic metrics.

Step 9. Performance evaluation and campaign adjustment. Like any marketing tool, SMM requires constant adjustment and optimization. So, with a certain periodicity, it is necessary to analyze the achieved results and adjust the company based on it.

To do this, you need to answer several key questions:

- How well was the campaign conducted?

- To what extent did this campaign solve its tasks?

- How did the campaign affect the business as a whole?

Moreover, the answers should be of a specific quantitative nature. It is believed that it is impossible to track the effectiveness of actions in social networks. However, it is not.

Here are the main sources of information for research:

- web analytics data (traffic, user activity, performance of targeted actions);

- analysis of user actions in social networks (marks "Like", comments, added materials in communities);

- internal statistics of communities and blogs (traffic, number of pages viewed, portrait of the audience);

- monitoring data of social networks and blogs (number of references, their tone, resonance);

- open sociological statistics on third-party sites (the number of views on video aggregators, the number of visits to topics on forums, etc.);

- classic sociological tools adapted for social networks (polls, work with focus groups, etc.);

- special marketing activities (system of promotional codes, dedicated phone numbers, etc.).

It is the data obtained from these sources that serve as the basis for further analysis. Patience and work ...

Tune in to a long systematic work, count on the fact that most likely the results of your SMM and SMO will become noticeable only after 4-6 months. And remember that it is extremely important to talk on pages on social networks not only about what you think is interesting for your target audience, but also about what is interesting and exciting to you personally. Only then will the synergy of all your actions bring its impressive results.