Social Media Marketing and E-mail Marketing: a Virtuous Report
The Global Digital Report 2019 established that, on average, Italians spend more than six hours a day on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and all the other social media, therefore, fill a consistent part of people's day.
That's why social media marketing can be an excellent opportunity to find new customers, make yourself known to those who haven't heard about your brand yet, improve the relationship with customers and even sell.
But what is social media marketing? Why is it important and what are the best strategies? Let's find out together.
Social media marketing: definition
Social media marketing is the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin are some of the most popular ones. Basically, it's about catching people's attention and curiosity, presenting or proposing our products or services and providing them with useful and entertaining content.
The aims can be different: generate engagement, increase brand visibility (brand awareness), interact with customers, increase, improve or change the opinion about our brand (brand reputation), create a relationship of trust with customers and prospects (loyalty), obtain contacts (lead generation), general positive word of mouth and, finally, sell.
Social media marketing can be included in the "big family" of web marketing: like all marketing actions, it requires a precise initial analysis, the study of the target market and a structured strategy, based on the data analysis.
Social media marketing could not exist without an editorial plan and calendar and investments in ads paid advertising campaigns on different platforms.
The editorial plan consists in creating a series of columns on topics, themes and interests of our target audience (or, better, of our buyer personas). For example, if we manage the social profiles of a cosmetics brand, it might be useful to create a column with the latest news in terms of make-up, or a column with useful guides, or another one focused on the most effective natural active ingredients for body care.
The editorial calendar helps you organize your posts, in order to get the best results. To understand which is the best time to post on your socials it is necessary - as in all web marketing actions - to analyze the insights (data provided by the platforms theirself, or by external platforms).
Depending on the objectives you want to achieve, the strategy changes. But the strategy must always follow a precise path:
- an initial audit to assess the initial social asset (on which socials is the brand present? Which are the socials on which our buyer personas are located? And other similar questions)
- Competitor analysis: what do direct and indirect competitors do?
- What content did we post? What results have they achieved in terms of engagement?
- How can we improve our social presence?
After the initial audit, we move on to define the strategy and the objectives we want to achieve, which must be realistic and measurable. Obviously the strategy must be tailored to the target audience, our ideal client.
Thanks to a clear strategy based on concrete objectives, we can move on to the creation of a content strategy and editorial plan and schedule. Part of the budget must be invested in social advertising campaigns which, among the various forms of paid advertising, is the one that has the best ROI (Return on Investment).
The final phase is the analysis of results, based on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) identified in the strategic phase.
Social media marketing and e-mail marketing: a virtuous relationship
One of the possibilities offered by social media is to obtain quality leads (contacts), i.e. prospects, potential customers interested in our product and service.
Therefore, between social media marketing and e-mail marketing there could be a virtuous relationship: once we get the first leads and they voluntarily give the affirmative consent to the processing of personal data, it is possible to start an e-mail marketing campaign with different objectives, depending on the strategy studied upstream.
For example, you can think of an email marketing campaign of an informative or sales nature, perhaps proposing special offers in exchange for contact (a valid lead magnet is always a good tactic to get a contact).
The important thing is that between social and e-mail marketing campaigns there is continuity and consistency, which is why in an overall marketing strategy it should be studied in what terms social media marketing and e-mail marketing should contribute, harmoniously, to the achievement of the objectives set.
So, to sum up, the social media marketing strategy can lead to new contacts that, thanks to e-mail marketing, can be transformed into loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
Remember that also e-mail marketing allows a series of useful actions to get new customers, arouse interest and brand awareness and sell: a bit like social media marketing, the costs can be quite low and the results excellent.
