Integrating Social Media into Your Marketing Strategy

Author: Kaitlyn Partington Category: B2B, B2C, E-commerce & Retail, Marketing, Nonprofit, Social Media & Digital Date: May 16, 2016

Whether you’ve been in business for many years, or you are just starting your business from scratch, you always have to make sure that you’re repeatedly taking a close look at your marketing strategy as a whole.

When developing a marketing strategy, you want to ensure that you’ve not only covered all avenues that you would like to embark on in order to increase your sales and business, but you want to make sure that each leg of your marketing strategy integrates with each other.

Social Media As Part of an Integrated Marketing Strategy

Utilizing the various social media platforms in your marketing strategy can oftentimes be an extremely important tactic in today’s business world. With its fast-paced momentum, its potential viral effect, and the opportunity it provides you to speak with your customers and potential customers in a public platform make it an ideal marketing tool. Couple that with its comparatively low advertising costs and social media seems like a winner to many.

But, beware of how you use social media in your marketing plan. It is important to always remember you must integrate it with the other marketing efforts you are taking on.

The Dangers of a Stand Alone Social Media Plan

Let’s take a look at an example of poor social media plans and see why they could be a waste of time.

Business A decided to start a Facebook page to promote the video tips they’ve recently filmed. They build out their Facebook page, incorporate some photos, and start posting their video tips daily.

Problem: Who is actually seeing these tips? Has Business A integrated their Facebook page into their marketing plan? If Business A is a paint brush company, and they are offering tips on how to extend the life of your paint brush, how to paint properly, where to buy the best paint, etc. then they will want their current and potential customers to see these tips.

Solution: It turns out that Business A has great customer service and a regular e-mail marketing campaign. Now that they have a Facebook page, it is important that they let their customers know that the page exists and direct them there for the video tips. A great idea is incentive them to visit and ‘like’ the page to ensure that they e-mail recipients know to do this, possibly with a coupon or freebie.

In addition to sending everyone they already know to their Facebook page, it would be beneficial for Business A to run a Facebook Advertising campaign to promote their page. They can choose the target market they wish to promote their page to, in order to maximize their dollar.

How To Integrate Social Media into Your Marketing Strategy

If you’re wondering whether your social media campaign is integrated with your marketing strategy – or could it possibly be standing on its own, unsupported – let us know and we’ll help you out. Understanding the intricacies of each social media platform can be a burden to some, but a little training can go a long way.