Social media can be an amazing platform for marketing! But business owners often question social media’s value to a business.
I get it: you have a social media manager who posts for you every day, but organic reach is down, you’re not seeing tangible results, and you’re tired of paying for something that’s not producing the outcome you want.
The real question is: have you defined your desired outcome goal? You need a goal and a plan so that you can evaluate your results. If you are not seeing results from social media marketing, then maybe you aren’t using it as successfully as you could.
Determining an Outcome Goal
Social media is a marketing channel for business, just like print, television, or radio. You need a budget, a plan, and a desired outcome goal.
Ideally, you want measurable results. Therefore, it makes sense that your outcome goal is the result of an action, such as clicking a link or signing up for an event. Stated another way, this goal is the outcome of what action you want the user to take.
Your goal determines the content and strategy that precede it. Without a goal, you won’t be as effective in seeing results from social media marketing efforts.
Without a goal you won’t be as effective in seeing results from social media marketing efforts.Click To TweetYou may have more than one objective, but there needs to be at least one goal that you expect from a single post or a campaign. Here are some goals that use social media to drive action and get results:
• Build an email list
• Promote your products and services
• Generate leads
• Conduct a survey
• Acquire members
• Accept donations
• Send people to your website or sales funnel
• Resolve customer service issues
• Take payments
• Show your videos
Creating a Plan to Drive Action with a Landing Page
There are many ways to achieve your outcome goal and get results from social media marketing—but you have to plan to do it!
One effective and widely-used method is to send your audience to a landing page via social media. A landing or sales page is a web page that displays targeted content with an easy, obvious call-to-action (CTA). That action results in your outcome goal.
Ideally, a landing page focuses on one main actionable goal. The page is free from extraneous navigation and has a single task for users to complete, such as a “sign up” button. You’re much likelier to produce quantifiable results with a landing page since users are presented with only one choice: take action or leave the page.
Here is an example of a landing page from InfusionSoft. The visitor provides their contact information in exchange for a product demo. This page helps InfusionSoft with the goal of gathering leads.
There are plenty of tools to create landing pages, including ClickFunnels, LeadPages, Get Response, and Instapage.
TIP: The fewer fields to fill, the more likely users are to fill out the form.
Measuring Results
Now that you have your outcome goal and a plan to reach that goal, you know what to measure and how to decide what success looks like. Additionally, analyzing your results keep you focused on your goal.
Tracking your stats on an offer that you’re promoting through social media will help quantify your results. You’ll see how your social media marketing efforts are paying off.
If you don’t see positive results, then that’s a metric to track as well. Either way, you gain valuable insight into what’s working for you on social media and what is not.
Social media should accomplish a task just like your other marketing channels.Click To TweetThe landing page tools mentioned previously have their own tracking and analytics. You can also use tracking pixels, Google Analytics, and social media platforms to measure your results.
No matter how you choose to analyze your metrics, just be sure to do it. The consistent analysis will help you improve your social media marketing, content, landing page, etc. Your metric might even teach you something about your audience that you didn’t know! And, as a result, you might want to change your outcome goal.
Seeing Results from Social Media Marketing Requires a Roadmap
There is no question that social media success involves other aspects such as content marketing, community building, engagement, and interaction. Those tools help gently create and nurture your audience.
But when it comes to social media as a marketing channel, you need a roadmap that includes 1) a goal, 2) a plan to drive action to achieve this goal, and 3) a way to measure results. Just as your other marketing channels accomplish a task, so should social media. Otherwise, you’re wasting a lot of time.
New to social media marketing? Be sure to check out these simple social media marketing tips for beginners from BuildThis.io!
Full of knowledge and helpful information about social media marketing. I just like the valuable information on social media marketing you provide to your articles. Thanks for such post and keep it up.
Thank you for the compliments and for the comment, I appreciate it!
For us the key was turning a hobby into a business. At first, we struggled with goals & strategy, but with the guidance of a fabulous coach we got there. Now working on the new year. Love your infographic.
Goals and strategy can be tough to define, Roslyn. We, too, have a coach and that does help with the big picture. Your business is doing great! Thanks for the compliment on my infographic–and for noticing it!
Thanks Meghan, you are so right. A plan is indeed needed, even though not easy if being a solpreneur…to keep track of everything, However, a clear goal is of course needed. 🙂
Being a solopreneur can be overwhelming–especially if you’re trying to DIY all of your tasks. Most things start with a goal, as you mentioned, and that helps define what you need to do next. Thanks Katarina!
I agree Meggie that many just post to post and things have changed over the last year that basically scream… don’t… do…that… it’s a waste of money. Yes, you will post to engage, but the point is to engage with those folks to do something else and that is to get them to your website, email list and to get in front of your product/service. perfect!
I mean, you get it…so I’m preaching to the choir on this topic! So many biz owners still don’t understand social media. The other day a biz owner asked me how many clients would social media posting bring to the business! Well, that’s a loaded question, and we both know it’s one that doesn’t have a specific, guaranteed answer. It’s a combo of factors, and engagement is certainly one of them. Thanks girlie!
I think I’ve lost sight of the goal for SM. All I know is I “should” post/tweet x number of times per day. If I get a lot of click or shares, then it’s “successful.” Thanks for clarifying things for me!
Hi Carol! That’s definitely not good to hear, although I appreciate your honestly. It’s nice to see the clicks, likes and share numbers on the rise, but if those actions aren’t resulting in sales somewhere down the line, then I would say they are just vanity metrics. Social media is must better with a goal, a plan, and a way to measure your efforts. Otherwise, social media can be a big waste of time in my opinion.
Nice, easy to understand guidelines, Meghan. All the points are critical. It’s amazing how many people don’t think to include calls to action. Why market otherwise? You can’t measure results unless you have a goal and a plan.
You totally understand what I’m talking about, Beth! But I’ll confess, sometimes I am guilty of not including a CTA, but I’m really starting to focus on our efforts. Social media can be a major time drain otherwise. Thanks!
Some really great tips here Meghan. With organic reach being so down on Facebook, I’m having to rethink strategies. Things need to change in 2016.
Thanks, Sonya! I realize that you already use landing pages and social media, so this wasn’t news to you. 😉 I half expect Facebook to push ad costs so high that small businesses will no longer be able to afford to market on the platform.
Thanks for the clear and easy to understand post, Meghan. As a writer, I think we bypassed this idea of having a specific landing page as I am not a business per se. At the time my book and my writing were what we wanted to focus on. If you have a very clearly defined product or service, a landing page makes sense, although personally I steer clear of any forms to fill out like this and when given the opportunity, go directly to someone’s site. It becomes a bit overwhelming to constantly be asked to signup for something and end up on too many mailing lists. I always believe that those who want to stay with you, stay with you because of the content you offer, not only the things you give away in an effort to either build your list or sell them something else. Yes, to goals, however, sometimes they unfold in the most unexpected of ways. I appreciate all the great info you shared here!
Thanks for your thoughtful comments Beverley. I can see how a landing page might not work for you (but I could spend ten minutes explaining why it might work for you, lol!). I’m right with you on the mailing list overload! I definitely didn’t mean to suggest that every social media post take users to a landing page. The concept is for a targeted campaign. And it doesn’t have to be just for sales…it works for events, surveys, etc. Content is definitely critical and attracts/keeps your fans. As always, I appreciate your point of view and feedback.
Great tips, Meghan. I’m working on the community building now, and having fun with it! Thank you for these.
Awesome Susan, and thanks for the compliment! Happy to hear that you value the community building aspect of social media–it’s critical. 🙂
You’re so right, social media accounts can quickly become a waste of time without distinct goals and then analyzing results. Personally, I recommend my customers use one or two of the most popular social media rather than every one that is available. One well attended account will definitely beat out 5 badly tended accounts.
– Trish
Good advice for your customers to follow, Trish! I completely agree that focusing on one or two platforms is a smart plan. Social media can become a big waste of precious time without an end goal in mind, that’s for sure!
Re setting a goal: I’m amazed at how many business people do not have goals — and not just for social media. For their entire business! How do you measure success without goals? How do you know where you need to modify or do something different altogether? It’s a mystery to me!
Exactly Jackie–how do you measure success without goals…especially on social media! Without a goal, social media can fall into that category of: why am I doing this again?