In 2022, social media is a place for businesses to connect and share with their audience. An audience with behavior patterns from the past, setting up profiles, sharing photos, memories, likes, and dislikes. They are still oversharing but on more security-minded platforms.
And as people begin to find and engage with your brand online, either as returning or potentially new customers, they are creating an organic audience to draw from when investing in paid media. They give your property analysts a clear picture of who is interested in your brand online, their age, location, purchase intentions, and interests, among other marketable aspects of themselves. This is your first-party data on social media.
Like the first-party data you collect on your website, social media is an essential aspect of any digital marketing strategy. Based on a Google conducted study, those using first-party data for key marketing initiatives saw an uplift in revenue of up to 2.9 times (compared to companies that didn't) and saved up to 1.5 times in costs.
But as your business begins to make the shift, keeping your strategies organized becomes ever more vital to overall success.
Categorizing Your Social Media Strategy Into Buckets
Bucketing is an integral part of organizing marketing strategies. Each bucket has its own needs, strengths, and weaknesses. And the same goes for social media, but for the sake of making things easier, we'll categorize social into two buckets, organic and ad network.
Organic Social
Organic social media audience data is a straightforward concept. Those that come to your brand naturally through features like Instagram's 'Explore' page, categorizations such as hashtags, or valuable word-of-mouth from someone they know and trust.
The data these users provide serves as a powerful source of information for your analysts, providing audience insights that can be utilized in paid strategies and campaigns. First-party data from social media users can also add to your brand's search engine optimization initiatives, helping those teams come up with new site pages and blog content ideas, along with different services and products your customers are looking for and can have better-optimized keywords on existing pages.
All of these help increase your brand's natural visibility and help consume a more significant percentage of your industry's share of voice.
Ad Network
Those who follow you on social media reflect your brand's audience, with at least 72% of American adults having some sort of presence online. These followers and their characteristics can be used to form a deeper understanding of your audience and pinpoint others like them.
From audience research and the understanding that comes from it, your marketing and analytics teams can put together audience types that will perform better and have higher ROIs due to the increased relevance of this sort of targeting.
When you know your audience, made up of people who actively engage with your brand online, you not only increase your reach, but your ads have more personalized copy that resonates with potential customers that lead to increased conversions.
And because you're using first-party data, your team has better control over mapping the user experience as they move from channel to channel. Then, once they realize the messaging, content, and call to action trends that were the most successful at converting, they can employ those elements in future campaigns and strategies.
An Audience First Approach
Audiences are made of customer signals, actions stemming from interests, behaviors, and decisions, and user segments and facts founded on consumers' mannerisms and traits.
Machine learning systems aggregate and overlay mixed buyer data signals and components to form automated learning buckets, which help us comprehend user journeys across networks and create audience-first targeting strategies.
With audiences from your social media platforms defined, you can stack our signals and segments to create customer bases.
How To Build An Audience-First Media Strategy
Though some make it look easy, it takes a well-oiled machine with all its moving parts working together in unison. Each one serves a purpose that helps drive the whole operation forward.
1. Audience Signals & Segments
Data on consumer passions and frequent behaviors paired with facts beyond age and gender create our audiences.
2. Incrementality
Formulating a marketing strategy is based on established customer bases that you know and understand, with audience size and budget steering priorities.
3. Budget & Individual Channel Planning
Budgets are allocated to ensure ongoing penetration of key audiences and flow based on top-performing tactics and changing data signals.
4. Storytelling Through Social Data
Through varying levels of personalization by the audience, you can leverage messaging sequencing and creative decision-making to move consumers through your brand journey.
Identifying Your Social Channels
Not all social media is good social media for your business. And although it is ideal to be present and active on as many channels as reasonable, it is difficult and costly to be everywhere. Spending too much time and effort on a social channel that is not right for your business or customers, you'll end up spending a lot of unnecessary time and resources and likey spreading your efforts too thin.
When you start with your audience, choosing the right paths to consumers becomes easier. Are you looking for an older, more professional demographic? Try Facebook or LinkedIn. More interested in targeting a younger, more influential group? Instagram and Tik Tok might be more your avenue. Have a beautiful product location and a robust set of photo and video assets, consider YouTube and Pinterest.
Whichever you choose, there will still be more questions to answer once you start targeting your audience through paid ads. With each platform comes its own unique niche of users that have similarities and differences to users on other platforms. They're all your audience, just slightly different from one another.
Types Of Media And Their Platforms
As stated before, each social media platform finds higher rates of success from different forms of content, and their user's behavior reflects those interests. Below, we'll examine some of the most popular platforms and the content that performs the highest.
1. Facebook
Facebook has quickly become one of the most popular platforms for ads in the hospitality and tourism industry next to Google, and that's for a good reason. The platform has users of all ages and demographics, allowing for the broad targeting of the largest percentage of your audience.
Ads that feature short videos or blog content will have the longest legs on the platform, which can be curated to your brand's following.
2. YouTube
Potential travelers want to know what they will see and experience while on vacation. Keeping your Youtube ads fun, informative, and with a clear call to engage, videos of most lengths are sure to garner some views.
3. Instagram
Instagram is Facebook's little brother and generally caters to a younger audience. Users of Instagram enjoy ads featuring high-resolution photos, stories/reels, and the occasional quote. Crafting branded content on your own platform or with influencers will draw a larger interest in your hotel, and its amenities.
4. Tik Tok
One of the newer platforms to gain mass popularity, Tik Tok is all about millennials and gen z. Here short videos are king. Making sure your content is up to date with the latest platform trends is the best way to make sure you have a clickable ad that converts into sales.
Users can see ads on relevant products, services, and experiences, though they only have a couple of seconds to make an impression.
5. Twitter
Twitter was built on news and written content. The ability to share information quickly in short snippets or "tweets'' allowed the platform to be quickly overrun by news outlets and journalists.
Today, brands in the hospitality industry and beyond can post ads to update users on news, events, and amenities around your hotel. With blog and site content that displays a clear CTA, converting to a booking is a more straightforward experience.
6. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is for professionals. Everyone knows this. And with your well-researched and analyst audience, your professional ads with business news and updates for webinars, conventions, and group bookings are sure to draw higher ROIs.
Now That You Have Data, Let's Talk CRM
So you've curated an abundance of first-party data from your social media platforms, but without the proper customer relationship strategy and management software to support it, what's it's value? A good CRM software and analysts to oversee it can nurture relationships with your clients while maximizing the organization's structure, effectiveness, and time management. And though there are a variety of excellent platforms on the market, all with their own pros and cons, there are a couple of features deemed essential.
1. Opt-In Mechanisms
The mechanisms allow users to opt-in to email efforts, giving you permission to engage in fun and informative marketing campaigns or timely newsletters.
2. SMS
Similar to email marketing campaigns, the ability to utilize first-party data to send text messages to current or potential customers can go a long way when it comes to forming relationships.
3. Data Warehousing
The ability to store your data neatly and efficiently is a blessing. Having a CRM that is able to warehouse your data is even better.
4. Integration With Measurement and Reporting Tools
As we move to be more data-minded in our marketing efforts, the need for seamless integration with marketing and reporting defines itself. Tracking data leads to trend analysis, and noticing trends leads to innovation.
Target Well And Prosper
If you've learned anything from this article, and I thank you for sticking around until the end, I hope it would be not to underestimate nor be intimidated by social media. Even with as much success and influence these platforms have had over the last two decades, changing the way we communicate with one another and ultimately do business, there's still doubt held in some corners of the industry that social media is all flash and no action. But, that's simply not the case.
Social media is where your current audience lives, your potential audience hangs out and can be reached and engaged. There is a lot to see and learn, and we should be taking notes every time we log on because it's constantly developing.
With the business tool available on almost every major platform, your team will have a clearer picture of who your customers are and what they want from your brand. And from the knowledge comes the power to better serve their needs and build a stronger relationship that your business can carry into the future.
Frank Vertolli is a marketing executive, entrepreneur, and co-founder of leading marketing and analytics agency, Net Conversion.
