Social Media Marketing and Advertising - 4 Industries That Could Benefit

Business owners all over the world are crafting their marketing strategies and many of them ask the same question. Is social media marketing and advertising good for our company? The answer is yes, social media is good for every company. It’s true that some companies benefit more than others however. In this article we will talk about four industry that have the most to gain. Let’s start by identifying what social media marketing is and how it works.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing and advertising are strategies used by businesses to distribute content on different social platforms. The average person has 7 different social media accounts. Even so, most businesses may only use one platform while others use two or three. Usually, local businesses will at least have a presence on Facebook or Instagram.

The type of content shared by businesses on social media is usually branded organic photos or text. What type of content being shared can vary by industry. For example, a retail clothing store may have photos of people modeling their products. Serviced based businesses may have photos of their employees working on job sites. 54% of people on social media use the platform for researching products. This makes social media marketing a very strong tool for business.

One reason why social media marketing and advertising can be such a great tool is because of tracking capabilities. Once a company has enough data they can optimize their content based on customer behavior. You can schedule your posts based on when your customers engage with your content the most. If most people react to your content at 2pm, that might affect when you make your post.

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How to Do Social Media Marketing

The first thing you need to do if you are going to use social media is come up with a plan. It is not a good idea to just create an account and randomly start posting content. You need to know how each platform works so you don’t waste your time and resources. The last thing you want to do is spend an hour creating a piece of content that nobody sees.

Sharing Content From Your Personal Accounts

A lot of businesses don’t know how the process works when they first get started with social media marketing. They don’t understand that on some platforms, producing content does not create followers. In most cases, the only people who can see your posts are people who follow you. Using hashtags or getting someone to share your post will help increase your views.That is why you see business owners sharing their business posts from their personal accounts.

Pay-Per-Click is a Viable Option

Since your posts are only shown to people who follow you, it can be very hard for a business just starting off. Even after months of developing followers, you may only have a few hundred people seeing your content. This is where pay-per-click advertising can be a great option for reaching new people. Most social media platforms allow you to set a daily budget and give you an estimate of how many people you can expect to see your posts.

Social Media Advertising Targeting

The most powerful aspect of social media marketing is the ability to advertise to specific users based on location, demographics, and interest. This is why it is so important to know who your customers are. If most of your customers are 42 year old females living within 25 miles of your store, you can restrict your advertisement to people matching that description.

Know Your Target Audience

If you don’t know who your audience is, you can find out by tracking the performance of your advertisement. Once you have enough data, you can see what types of people engaged with your advertisement. You can then narrow your audience and market to only those types of people. Doing this will prevent you advertising to people who aren’t interested in your product or service.

Two Approaches from Businesses

One of the problems businesses have when using social media is not knowing what type of content to post. When this happens, you will see businesses respond in two different ways. They will either post irrelevant content or not post anything at all. Here are a few examples of business types and what they should be posting on social media.

Here are a few examples of business types who could benefit from posting on social media

Service Based Business Marketing

These types of social media posts are great for the following;

Construction Advertising
Electrician Advertising
Plumber Advertising
HVAC Advertising
Painter Advertising
Roofer Advertising

Here are a few examples of content ideas for these business types

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How to’s – Sharing a quick tip on how to accomplish a task provides a lot of value for viewers. Anyone who has been in business for a while has learned unique ways of doing things that the average person probably wouldn’t not know. This is great because the content is fresh and not duplicated from somewhere else
Photos of Employees on the Job Site – Building trust is one of the most important parts of sales. People like to know something about the person showing up at their house to do a job. If they see you and your employees on social media, it eases some of the anxiety that comes along with hiring a stranger.
Snippets from Recent Blog Posts – If your company has a blog, you can share a few sentences from some of your best articles and add the link. This is great for you and the customer because it provides value and also sends traffic to your website.

Restaurant Marketing

Share information about the chef or waiting staff. Feeling like you can trust the person who is preparing your food can be a big deal.to people. Telling a story about where employees come from and their journey is a good way of making your company more personable.
Photos of Specials – Some restaurants have specials for days of the week or holidays. Sharing a high quality photo of the dish detailing what is included in the order is a great strategy and will allow you to make posts fairly often. You can even post a photo of one of your customers enjoying the meal.
Share a Recipe – Some restaurants don’t like sharing their secrets but this is an example of something that provides a lot of value. Chances are, the customer is not going to be able to recreate the dish like the restaurant can. This is the type of post that would likely receive a lot of engagement. Especially if the recipe is for something a lot of people order.

Financial Services Marketing

These types of social media posts are great for the following;

Accounting Advertising
Banking Advertising
Insurance Advertising

Here are a few examples of content ideas for these business types

Educate Your Customers – A lot of the people who need financial services don’t understand what they are investing in. This makes it much harder for them to make an informed decision. Sharing educational information on your social media pages positions you as the trusted advisor. When someone is in the market for financial services, they could choose you because they learned something from your content.
Stories About How Your Services Changed Someone’s Life – People can relate to a good story. Stories also serve as real life evidence of your company’s value. This is a great strategy for those in the insurance and accounting industry. Being able to show how you saved your customers money would make great content.
Responding to Biggest Concerns in Reviews – This is very important for the banking industry because people can have a lot of anxiety about their money. Fear of scams, hacking and other negative things result in a lot of questions from customers. Being able to calm your customers by explaining your policies and protections can go a long way. At the very least they will know that you are aware and working to keep their assets safe.

Healthcare Advertising

These types of social media posts are great for the following;

Dentists
Chiropractors
Doctors
Physical Therapists
Sports Medicine
Optometrists
Family Medicine

Here are a few examples of content ideas for these business types

Share Facts About Current Healthcare Issues – A perfect example of this type of post is sharing information about a pandemic such as COVID-19. There is a lot of fear and along with that comes misconceptions. Informative posts from an authoritative healthcare facility or professional can keep a community calm.
Videos of Stretching and Rehab Routines – Some facilities send their patients home with diagrams about how to stretch for rehab. This can be confusing for some people and will result in them not doing anything at the expense of their health. These patients could benefit greatly from a video walking them through the exercise step-by-step.
Provide Updates on New Technology – When healthcare facilities invest in a new tool or device, it increases the value of their service. Letting customers know about how a new device can save time or increase the success rate of a procedure would be a great piece of content. An example of this would be new technology that an optometrist uses to scan your eyes without having to use a solution that burns the customers eyes. Sharing the fact that you have invested in these capabilities would be great for business.

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How Much Does Social Media Marketing Cost?

Social Media Marketing and Advertising Pricing

One of the good things about social media platforms is affordability. If you want to manage your social media account yourself, you can do that for free. A lot of business owners will set up their business accounts and produce content when they have free time. This is not recommended but it is a way to have some sort of presence for no cost.

If you do decide to invest in social media to grow your business, it can actually be quite cheap. You can hire someone to write posts for your page ranging from once per week to every day. The prices would be dependent upon what you were hoping to achieve with the content and whether it was text, image, or video. Hiring a social media manager for organic posts only could range anywhere from $30 per month to upwards of $1,000.

Something to consider with social media marketing and advertising is the reach you are going to get with your content. If you only have 10 followers you probably won’t want to pay someone to manage your account. The reason is because unless something goes viral your content isn’t going to reach anyone other than those 10 people. In this type of situation you would be better served to invest in pay-per-click advertising.

Most Common Social Media Marketing and Advertising Packages

Some of the services offered by social media management companies include the following:

Building brand awareness
Gaining new followers
Optimizing your information
Posts on multiple platforms
Paid ad campaign setups
Advertising audience optimization
Pixel setup

Building a Brand

Building brand awareness is simply about making sure your company is in the forefront of the consumer’s mind. Guest posts, consistent content creation, and commenting on other people’s posts are some of the ways to accomplish this goal.

Gaining New Followers

Gaining new followers is never a guarantee but happens naturally if you are consistently producing high quality content. People appreciate good information and will follow you if you provide enough value.

Optimizing Your Page

Optimizing your information is very important for making sure that when people search for your product or service they can find you. It also helps with your website’s SEO since the information on your social media is consistent with other platforms.

Post on Multiple Platforms

Posting on multiple platforms is part of the brand awareness process. The more places consumers can find you the more authority it gives your company. The top platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. You should be on all of these platforms if you are hoping to truly build your business on social media.

Paid Advertising

There is much more to cost-per-click advertising than boosting a post or targeting a location. The metrics you can use on platforms such as Facebook are so detailed that it can take many hours of testing and research before your ads even start turning a return on investment.

Audience Optimization

Advertisement audience optimization is part of the targeting process with social media ads. One strategy you can use is to run multiple ads within one campaign and see which one has the most engagement. After time has passed and you have enough data, you can optimize your ad toward what yields the greatest return on investment.

Setting Up Your Pixel

Setting up your pixel is absolutely necessary for advertising on Facebook. The pixel gives you the ability to track your viewers as they travel through your website. This gives you the information you need to adjust according to your weak spots.

All of these services are required in order for you to take your business to the next level with social media advertising. If you paid a company to manage all these parts of your social media it could cost upwards of $5,000 per month. Of course, the size of your business and the amount of content you wanted to produce would play a role in the cost. Usually the companies offer multiple packages with setup fees and monthly maintenance.

Cost Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing and Advertising

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Social Media is a very cost effective form of advertising because at the very least you have the free option. If you make decisions based on the data, the return on investment for pay-per-click can be fantastic. There are 2.5 billion social media users worldwide so taking advantage of social media needs to be a priority for your business.

Conclusion

Every business needs to have a presence on social media. The statistics prove that consumers are using social media in massive numbers and they are looking for products and services as they scroll their feeds. 71% of social media users who have a positive experience with a brand are likely to share it with a family member or friend. Social media is a big piece of your digital marketing puzzle. Take advantage of the hours people spend on social networks every day and grow your business.