Personalize Your Marketing with Social Media and Automation Platforms

When it comes to personalized marketing, there are plenty of avenues you can utilize. Programs such as MailChimp and HubSpot, to name a few, provide you with marketing automation through various methods, including smart calls to actions, smart landing pages and email campaigns. Once the user gets to your website, however, it’s up to you to keep them there.

What options do you have? Well, Google offers re-targeting ads, which specifically focus on users that have come to your website and have basic information on who you are and what type of content you produce.

But one of the simplest ways to engage is through your social media.

Don’t think customers are taking a look at your social media accounts? Think again. According to Ambassador, 71% of consumers who have had good social media service experience with a brand are more likely to recommend it to others.

Social media marketing is a tool your company can’t afford to skimp out on. Here’s how to use your accounts to your company’s advantage.

Customizing your target audience

Once you’re able to narrow down your target audience, social media can do the work from there. Take Facebook, for example. Marketers are able to upload their customer and possible prospect lists, and sent relevant, effective advertising to these sections.

The perfect example: New movers. About 16% of your customers move in a year, averaging out to around 43 million people. And, considering new movers are likely to spend more in the first 6 months post-move than normal consumers do in 3 years, they’re the ideal customers.

Of course, if you aren’t getting updated contact lists, these efforts will be next to pointless. Use Facebook and other social media accounts to provide accurate, updated lists, so you can rest assured you’re targeting the right people in the right spot.

Digest your platforms

You wouldn’t want to post the same content on all of your social media accounts …. Right? You’ll need an analysis of your audience to help you decide which platform you should stick with for your campaign.

For example, if you’re aiming for a visual campaign with images for women, you’ll want to go with Pinterest. Not only do pictures do well on Pinterest, but surveys show Pinterest’s user base is made up of mostly women. According to HubSpot, Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than any other type of content. So while you may not think pictures pack enough punch, this says otherwise. On the flip side, users look to Facebook for longer posts, so posting just a picture won’t be the same here. Know your platforms, experiment what works best and you’ll always deliver what your audience wants.

Note: Your first step should be finding out the demographic composition of your audience. A study conducted by comSource breaks down the age composition for each social network. Some findings include:

• Snapchat is the preferred platform for ages 18-24
• People between the ages of 25-34 preferred Instagram
• Ages 35-44 preferred Google and LinkedIn.

Bring your campaigns in

Sure, social media marketing give your campaign a brand new flavor. But if you’re looking to bring it to unheard of heights, you’ll want to mix in other forms of marketing, such as direct mail and email. In fact, Social Media Examiner found that over 81% of marketers strongly agree or agree that they should mix social media into their traditional marketing.

One easy way to do this is incorporate your social media into your website. You’ll find mixing these two – social media accounts and your website – will likely increase traffic to your website. It’s a win-win.

Keep track of your successes – and failures

You’ll want to keep track of your successes – and fallbacks – through engagement metrics. A lot of online platforms offer data settings where you can check out the clicks, shares, links and comments. This way, you can see how each and every campaign is doing – and where you need to tailor things.

After all, Facebook offers an “interests” section for their users’ profiles. This’ll give you great insight on where their interests lie, and send messages to anyone directly within your target market.

Understanding each online platform and altering your campaigns to deliver a personalized touch will put you steps above the competition. Not only will you be able to identify what your users want, but you’ll be able to clearly pinpoint what they don’t want.

In this Insivia insight, Justine talks about how you can make your marketing more personal by using robust marketing automation platforms like Marketo and Hubspot.

Additionally, another way to make your marketing more personalized is through engaging your customers and prospects through social media. There are a number different strategies to go about this. One of the major challenges to this approach is that it requires a large commitment of time, and tracking ROI accurately is a challenge.

Learn about Insivia’s Audience Builder software Persona Bold.