Social media isn’t just a crucial part of any marketing mix in its own right, it also serves as supporting all the other marketing assets.
Social media is often thought of as the superhero of modern marketing.
When brands are stagnating or desperately struggling to keep afloat, social media swoops in with its extraordinary powers to market to large groups of people, broadcasting the exact message they want, and all for very little cost.
Yet, if social media is Batman, what’s often overlooked is that it is also Robin. Social media isn’t just a crucial part of any marketing mix in its own right, it also serves as supporting all the other marketing assets.
Savvy marketers understand that social media is a crucial part of every marketing mix, incorporating videos, blogs, paid advertisements, and influencer marketing, across multiple platforms, to bolster the outcomes of their marketing strategy.
Here’s how incorporating social media into your marketing mix can help you achieve tangible outcomes and real bottom line results.
What is social media?
Social media is a range of online platforms that allow brands to publish their own content to consumers.
The most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, each having their own particular strengths and audiences.
Brands commonly produce images, articles and videos for social media, but increasingly, social media platforms are expanding their offerings to include features like infographics, live streaming, and stories.
The benefits of using social media
The great thing about social media, as opposed to traditional media like newspapers, is that brands get to control their own messaging, which is aligned to their marketing strategies.
It enables you to answer the fundamental questions all marketing strategies should answer: what the consumer’s issue is, how your business can resolve it, and why they should choose you over a competitor.
What’s really attractive about including a social media strategy into the marketing mix, for small and medium sized businesses in particular, is that it allows brands to get in front of a lot of people very quickly and cheaply.
Social media also allows you to connect deeply with your customers and potential customers via comments and direct messaging, and by targeting messaging and offerings to very specific cohorts.
Social media is also very much a two-way street. Brands can market their messaging, but by monitoring trends, collecting feedback, and reading comments and reviews, can also gain a valuable insight into what their customers want and need, and feed that back into their marketing strategies.
How social media supports other marketing activity
Social media is a key support of all marketing activity because it can emphasise again and again the messaging and offerings of other marketing mix assets, like print, TV or radio, in real time and to a large group of potential customers.
It’s the immediacy of social media that is its real asset here. It allows you to respond in a timely way to questions and can remind customers of promotions that are about to end.
Social media content also allows you to extend your existing marketing efforts. A billboard, for example, might be a great way to tell passersby about the great the new product or service you are offering, but isn’t the best place for in-depth instructions or tutorials. A video or article shared on social media can add that layer of information.
Importantly, social media reinforces your marketing message at every stage of the buying cycle. It tells people who you are and what you offer at the awareness stage; it provides supporting information at the research stage; and it’s a great platform for sealing the deal by highlighting offers and promotions at the buying stage.
Social media as part of the marketing mix
When we’re developing a marketing strategy, it’s important to understand that the assets that make up our marketing mix are most powerful when they work together – and social media is an essential cog in the machinery.
When you target potential customers from several different angles, it builds your brand, and provides a fuller picture of who you are and what you offer.
A strategic mix of activities in your marketing supports the basic truth that the more people you target, the better your results, and there’s no better way to get in front of a large audience for very little cost than social media.
Having a mix of activities means you can broaden your net by having multiple touch points to share your message and reach your target market, in addition to gathering important data to inform future marketing campaigns, giving your business the insight and edge it needs to grow.
Call in the social media experts
Social media is a part of the marketing mix that requires particular expertise and experience to be really effective. It’s understanding different messaging for different platforms, timings, and how social media supports all your marketing efforts.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne and can help brands and businesses develop a marketing mix that achieves the most effective results possible.
To find out how we can help you create the right marketing mix, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or drop us a note via our contact form below.