In today’s digital world, social media is one of the most powerful tools for connecting brands with their audience.
Brands can stand to gain many benefits from having a prominent social media presence, including increased brand awareness and visibility, audience engagement, and improved brand loyalty.
With Statista predicting that the number of social media users is set to rise to 5.17 billion by 2027, that is still a lot of potential customers out there who have yet to learn about your brand.
However, this can make setting and choosing which social media goals to prioritise an intimidating process.
To help you get started, check out our handy guide, which details the factors you need to consider before choosing the most profitable goal for your social media campaign…
1. Define your objectives
Behind every successful social media campaign are the clear and measurable objectives that helped produce a winning strategy.
Your objectives will set the benchmark for your campaign and contribute to your brand’s overall goals.
They will also provide your campaign with value and purpose, as well as help you maintain focus throughout your campaign’s duration.
Common objectives brands will set for their social media campaigns include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Boosting conversion and sales
- Generating new leads
- Driving website traffic
- Improving community engagement
- Building up your brand’s reputation
2. Set S.M.A.R.T. goals
Once you have outlined your campaign’s overall objectives, it’s time to get into the details.
Use the S.M.A.R.T. method to structure your goals, as this ensures that they will be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.
For example, if one of your overall objectives was to generate new leads from a social media campaign, your S.M.A.R.T. goal would look like this:
‘Over the next five months, I would like to increase the number of generated leads from our social media channels by 20%. To achieve this, I will optimise content, engage with users, and aim to increase our following.’
Establishing your goals in this way will help you create a social media campaign that targets any areas of concern and gives them a much-needed boost.
Don’t worry if your goals don’t immediately jump out at you; you’re not alone.
The Sprout Social Index reports that almost half of marketer’s state that aligning their social media goals with their business goals is their top struggle.
3. Understand your target audience
For any campaign to be successful, it needs to resonate with and add value to its target audience.
Doing a bit of research never hurts and can give you a greater insight into who your audience is, what they are looking for, and the problems they want to solve.
You can do this by looking at factors such as:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Interests
- Spoken language
- Which social channels they use
- The types of content they consume
- When they are most active
- Preferred communication preferences
Once you have narrowed down your target audience, you can create buyer personas to inform your campaigns going forward.
HubSpot states that 96% of marketers say that customers appreciate personalisation and that it helps increase the chances of buyers becoming repeat customers.
4. Assess your previous campaigns
If you have rolled out previous social media campaigns, it is always worth assessing their performance and results.
Your previous campaigns can provide invaluable insights into what worked well and what did not, so you do not make the same mistakes again.
For example, if you found that more users clicked through to your site from social posts which discussed specific topics or were more image-based, you would do more of this post type moving forward if one of your goals was to improve click-through rate.
5. Look at competitor campaigns
To carry out social media management effectively, it is important that you stay ahead of the competition.
Just like reviewing your own previous campaigns, researching your competitors’ previous and current campaigns can help you avoid similar mistakes and identify new opportunities they may have missed.
In addition to gathering data specific to their content, you can also gain insights into how often they post, what dates and times work well for their posts, if they respond to comments, and what their brand voice is like.
6. Don’t be afraid to experiment
Finding yourself full of ideas for a social media campaign is never a bad thing, so don’t be afraid to try them out and utilise A/B testing.
A/B testing allows you to test out various ideas for your campaign on a select audience to see which is going to be most effective and provide the most return on investment.
There are various elements of your social media campaigns that you can test, such as:
- Long posts vs. short posts
- Use of emojis
- Headlines
- Calls to action
- Tone of voice
- Use of images and video
- Hashtags
- Mobile vs tablet vs desktop Layouts
Hootsuite states that one of the key benefits of A/B testing is that it allows you to create the most effective content before you release it to the wider world.
7. Successful social media campaigns
Sometimes a social media campaign comes along and leaves you wondering: How did they do that?
However, if you feel intimidated by a competitor’s success, you shouldn’t, as you can use their ideas as a base to inspire fantastic campaigns of your own.
They can also be helpful for uncovering further insights about your target audience and how they responded to the campaign, highlighting emerging trends that you could capitalise on in your campaign, and applying similar tactics to build up your own brand’s visibility.
Stand-out successful social media campaigns include:
Dove’s #DetoxYourFeed campaign:
.@dove fights with the beauty “norms” promoted on teens’ social media feeds with the #DetoxYourFeed campaign. https://t.co/hcxpWecn43@Ogilvy #beauty #dove #women #beautystandards #socialmedia pic.twitter.com/Ls3lusr8m7
— Branding.news (@brandnewsfeed) May 10, 2022
This powerful campaign succeeded in its goal of opening the conversation surrounding mental health and body image.
LinkedIn reports that the hashtag was used 27,000 times on Instagram, and the YouTube video has gained over one million views.
Spotify #Wrapped campaign:
The category is: top #SpotifyWrapped tracks by genre. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/tRY1GQtake
— Spotify (@Spotify) December 11, 2023
The music streaming platform provided listeners with a breakdown of their most listened to artists, genres, and podcasts from the past year.
Time reported that in 2022, over 156 million users engaged with Wrapped. This included users taking to social media to share their wrapped images with others, providing Spotify with a wealth of user-generated content for free!
Need help with your social media campaigns?
If you would like to learn more about how you can increase your social media campaign’s profitability, get in touch today to see how we can help.
Alternatively, book in for a Free Acquisitions Workshop, where you will receive in-depth and personalised advice from our expert marketers, free resources, and a tailored action plan to take your social campaigns to new heights.
