7 Critical Questions Your Social Media Marketing Plan Must Answer

There are lots of benefits to adopting a social media marketing plan into your digital strategy.

The trendiness of social platforms presents a unique opportunity for you to promote your brand. That allows you to attract more leads and convert them into loyal customers.

But to get there…

You need an effective marketing plan that reduces costs and drives results.

Here are seven essential questions every social media marketing plan must answer:

1- Who is Your Ideal Customer?

Targeting the proper audience is crucial if you want to win with any marketing strategy. It’s the first step to drafting a great marketing plan that transforms your brand.

Why?

Simple because identifying your ideal customer is the basis of cost-effective marketing. It allows you to focus your growth on the right audience to achieve outstanding results.

Your prospects are segmented based on the following categories:

• Demographic (age, race, sex, education, etc.)
• Psychographic (personality, values, beliefs, etc.)
• Behavioristic (spending habits, brand interactions, etc.)
• Geographic (area, street, region, country, etc.)

Segmenting your target customers helps you identify the right platform for your business.

It also facilitates your content productions and refines your message.

But more importantly:

It allows you to produce content that resonates with your followers and ensures the best results.

2- Who Are Your Biggest Competitors on Social Media?

By observing how your competition is doing on social media, you can craft a solid strategy that boosts your brand.

Better yet:

You’ll save yourself lots of time and money by identifying shortcuts. And you’ll avoid all the mistakes your competitors made by learning from them.

To analyze your competition:

You have to identify your biggest competitors on social media and the platforms they’re on. These might be the same competitors you have when doing SEO and paid advertising.

Then:

You must find out which social platforms are working best for them. You can base that on engagement, followers, top posts, etc.

That allows you to compare their results with yours and determine what you can improve in your strategy.

3- What Type of Content Will You Share?

A well-balanced marketing plan focuses on publishing the right type of content.

You want to offer your followers various types of posts to keep them interested. But at the same time, your content has to be unique and relatable.

There are six types of updates you see on social media today:

• Plain-text
• Images
• Videos
• Quotes
• Reshares
• Links

That’s enough for you to diversify your content plan and keep it interesting.

You must share relatable quotes, sayings, thoughts, etc., to give a positive brand image. You’ll publish your latest blog posts and articles.

But also:

Be sure to include promotional content and offers to promote your services. 

More importantly:

Try to engage your followers by including them in discussions and asking them questions. Call them to take action in creative ways to increase click-through-rates and conversions.

4- How Often Should You Post?

Content publishing frequency can make or break your social media marketing plan.

Publishing once a month keeps your brand in the shadows of your competitors. But if you share too many posts every day, you’ll come off as spammy and salesy.

That’s why you need to find the right frequency for sharing new content.

Of course, the answers here differ from one social platform to another. 

You can share 20 posts a day on Twitter, but doing that on Facebook will kill your engagement rates immediately.

Therefore…

A good place to start here is to go back to your competitors and see how often they’re pushing new posts.

What frequency is working best for them? And which posts are getting the most engagements?

Also:

You have to experiment a little bit and see what drives the best results. Try increasing frequency incrementally until you hit optimal engagement rates and impressions.

5- When Should You Post Your Updates?

“When” is just as important as “what” and “where” when it comes to social media marketing.

The perfect post wouldn’t be effective if no one sees it. 

Therefore:

Getting the timing right is essential to boosting engagements and conversions.

Your ideal customer spends a limited daily amount of hours on screen. So, the timing depends on their schedule and availability during the day.

Many factors determine the ideal publishing time — including location, consumer habits, etc. 

So, remember:

There is no universal timing that works for all businesses. 

And you don’t want to publish your content at the same time as your competitors. 

It helps to zag when everyone else zags.

6- What Are Your Key Performance Indicators?

Setting key performance indicators (KPIs) helps you stay on track with your marketing plan. These metrics are the best way to measure your growth and adjust your plan.

KPIs vary from one social platform to another – but, they all fall under the following categories:

• Reach
• Engagements
• Leads
• Conversions

Likes, comments, and shares are important. They can help you make the right decisions with your marketing.

Yet…

Your business goals go deeper than the number of reactions on a social post. So, identify your most important KPIs and use them to monitor your progress. 

7- Will You Need Management Tools?

In today’s fast-paced world, time is everything.

But…

Having to post content on multiple social platforms is time-consuming. And the whole process can be daunting if you have to repeat it regularly.

Thankfully, there are endless options to automate all of that.

There are social media tools to save you the trouble of managing everything manually. By using them, you can run your social media marketing plan without any hassle.

These social media management tool will allow you to:

• Schedule your posts to go live on specific dates and times
• Monitor your posts and social campaigns
• Generate full performance reports and analyze them
• Re-share and recycle old content to keep it relevant

Now, here’s the truth:

Some management tools are over-priced. Others can be easily replaceable with free tools or manual posting. And not all companies need management tools, especially small businesses. 

So, before you start using any social media marketing software, be sure that it’s a necessity that fits your budget.

Or…

Go with the free plan and save yourself additional expenses that can add up to thousands of dollars over the years.

Social Media Marketing Plan: The Bottom line

A plan answering these questions will save you a lot of time and drive your costs down in the long run. You’ll avoid many beginner mistakes and ensure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

So, take your time answering them…

Ready to grow your brand with social media marketing?

Check out our social media marketing services to learn the basics and find out more about how we can help. Give us a call at 949-354-2574 now so we can discuss your project needs and solutions.