In recent years, social media has become an essential marketing tool for a business to remain relevant and visible, especially in today’s dynamic online landscape. It no longer comes as a surprise that companies now seek to improve their social media presence to shore up their digital marketing campaign. More than 90% of marketing experts agree that social media helped increase their brand’s exposure. Suffice to say, the remaining 10% who don’t utilize social media to the fullest are missing out on this game-changing opportunity.
Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Platform
Although it sounds simple, choosing the digital platform that best fits a particular business is more complicated than it seems. There are at least a thousand digital marketing platforms to choose from. The good news for any marketing team is, they can always start by narrowing down the list first. By then, it becomes easier to determine the best platform that will help them meet their company’s marketing objectives or provide the kind of exposure they’re looking for in the most relevant market.
Narrowing Down the List of Choices
Given the influx of platforms that can host a company’s digital marketing campaign, owners and their marketing teams shouldn’t have a hard time finding a site that’s a hand-in-glove fit to their business. These platforms connect people with similar hobbies, shared interests, and comparable demographics, among others.
On the flip side, this means that there are way too many platforms for one business entity to establish a presence. It isn’t economical to spend time, effort, and resources on every site. That’s why it’s important for businesses to determine which platforms get the largest chunk of online traffic daily. Three of the social media platforms that have the most number of active users monthly are:
Map out Objectives
Before moving any further, however, any business should lay out specific goals and objectives first.
Having clear-cut objectives will prove beneficial not only in choosing the best platform but other important details as well, such as:
- The type of content to create
- Target audience
- Digital marketing campaign strategy
- and more
Know the Target Audience
The main point of being on a digital marketing platform is for a company to be in touch with its target audience. It is, therefore, imperative for businesses to determine which channels their prospective clients are already using.
A rather simple way to find out is by conducting a customer survey to ask questions like, where do they get their information online, which influencers they follow, channels they subscribe to, and social sites they spend most of their time in.
Alternatively, companies can gather this information through digital marketing platforms themselves. Social sites such as Facebook make valuable data more accessible to businesses and companies.
Decide on the Type of Content
Since a specific type of content works better on a particular digital marketing platform, companies should also consider the kind of content their audience can expect from them, which also works best with their brand.
For instance, Instagram is a platform that caters mainly to images, so long-form textual content may not be the ideal post to create.
Finally, when deciding on the type of content to create, it’s best to consider factors such as brand, target audience, and specific industry that the company belongs to.
Overall, the types of content to focus on include:
- Podcasts
- Blog posts
- Livestreams and Webinars
- Testimonials
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Images
- User-generated content
- and many more
Comparisons between Digital Marketing Platforms
After mapping-out objectives, knowing the target audience better and deciding on the type of content that will work best, it’s time to go through the different platforms to determine the best fit.
A rundown of the three digital marketing platforms are as follows:
LinkedIn (Registered users: Over 706 million)
LinkedIn is the platform of choice for most B2B companies that put a premium on lead generation. It also caters to editorial content and can prove useful to a company building authority for its brand or establishing itself as a trusted figure in a particular industry.
The prevalent demographic in this platform is slightly different from other sites as most of its users are between 30 and 49 instead of under 30.
Facebook (Monthly active users: 2.7 billion)
Facebook is commonly the first platform to come to mind when discussing the best site to engage a target audience, collect reviews, and advertise products and services.
Aside from being one of the world’s biggest social media sites, it’s also a pioneer in providing advertising options to businesses. For this reason, most, if not all, of the biggest brands maintain a presence here through a Facebook Business page.
Instagram (Monthly active users: over 1 billion)
Instagram is the platform best suited for businesses who create videos and images for their target audience. It is built around photo sharing and pretty much any visual content. One thing to note aside from not being a text-heavy platform is, it doesn’t allow links within posts.
Overall, Instagram serves as a valuable tool for building a brand’s identity. Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies can utilize the platform to share product photos and encourage their followers to develop user-generated content.
The use of hashtags or the ever-popular IG stories feature is another creative way for a company to reach its target audience and expand its social media presence.
Key Takeaway
When utilized as digital marketing platforms, social media sites play a huge role in:
- building brand awareness
- generating web traffic
- getting to know a target audience better
- finding new leads
- gaining valuable insight into customers’ buying behavior
- improving customer service
- and many more
Ultimately, the key for businesses in choosing the right platform lies in these three main factors. Determining the goals they want to achieve through a digital marketing campaign, know where to establish their social media presence, and decide on the type of content that matches what their audience is looking for.
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