Social Media Marketing

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing (SMM) refers to the use of social media platforms and websites to promote and market products or services. This marketing approach includes both organic activities and paid advertising and aims to build a brand, interact with the audience and ultimately achieve business goals.

Core elements of social media marketing:

Presence and brand building:

• Presence: brands create profiles on various social media platforms to be visible and reachable.
• Brand message: Consistency of the brand message across all platforms is crucial for brand recognition.

Content creation and publishing:

• Content: developing relevant, engaging and valuable content is crucial for audience engagement.
• Content plan: A structured content calendar helps to post content regularly and strategically.

Audience engagement:

• Interaction: actively communicating with the target audience by responding to comments, messages and sharing user-generated content.
• Community management: Maintaining and developing the online community to promote positive brand association.

Paid advertising:

• Targeted advertising: using paid adverts to target specific demographics.
• Analysis: monitoring the performance of paid campaigns for ongoing optimisation.

Analysis and optimisation:

• Data analysis: examining data to determine trends, behaviour and success of SMM activities.
• Customisation: Modifying strategies based on the data obtained for continuous improvement.

Application examples:

• Product launches: Introducing new products through teaser videos, images or pre-announcements.
• Campaigns and competitions: Organising online competitions or campaigns to increase engagement and reach.
• Customer service: Using social media as a platform for customer support to process enquiries and feedback.
• Influencer marketing: Collaborations with influencers to expand reach and increase brand awareness
• Live streaming: organising live events, Q&A sessions or presentations to promote interaction with the target group.

The definition of social media marketing

Social media marketing involves the use of social media platforms to promote a brand, product or service and enable direct communication with a target group. The focus can be on paid advertising measures as well as on increasing organic reach. SMM integrates a variety of strategies to optimise marketing communication, customer service and market research and uses platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more to address specific, often demographically and psychographically segmented target groups.

Social media marketing strategy

Developing an effective SMM strategy requires extensive planning and analysis of various factors, including analysing target audiences, setting marketing objectives, selecting the appropriate platforms and developing content strategies. This is a cyclical process in which the measures implemented are constantly evaluated and adapted through monitoring and analysis.

• Target group analysis: Determination and analysis of the demographic characteristics, preferences and behaviour of the target group.
• Definition of marketing objectives: Defining clear, measurable objectives that are in line with the overall corporate objectives.
• Selection of platforms: Identifying the platforms most likely to be used by the target audience.
• Content strategy: Developing content that informs, entertains and encourages interaction, and defining the publication schedule.

Goals of social media marketing

The objectives of SMM are varied and are usually determined based on the overall business and marketing goals of a company or organisation. Some common goals could be:

• Increasing brand awareness: increasing visibility and awareness of a brand or product.
• Generating leads and conversions: Encouraging prospective customers to take a specific action, e.g. purchase, sign up or download.
• Customer loyalty: Fostering a more loyal customer base through direct communication and community building.
• Increasing website traffic: directing social media users to your own website.
• Reputation management: Shaping and controlling the public image of the brand.

What are social media marketing tools?

Social media marketing tools are digital platforms or software solutions that have been developed to facilitate and optimise social media marketing activities. These tools offer a variety of functionalities, including content planning and publishing, data analysis, customer communication and process automation. They help to effectively and efficiently implement marketing strategies on social media platforms and achieve the defined goals.

Content management

An essential aspect of SMM is the creation, planning and publication of content. Tools that focus on content management enable time-controlled posting on various platforms, content management and often also performance analysis.

Analysing and reporting

By generating data on reach, engagement and conversions, analytics tools allow continuous monitoring and optimisation of social media activities and campaigns.

Customer interaction and service

Some tools are designed to improve communication with the community and customers by providing features such as chatbots, comment management and direct messaging.

Ads management

Specialised ad management tools support the creation, targeting and monitoring of paid advertising campaigns on various social media platforms.

Selected social media marketing tools

• Hootsuite: A comprehensive solution for the management of various social media channels, which enables the planning of posts, monitoring of brand mentions and analysis of KPIs.
• Buffer: A tool that is used in particular for planning and automating content posts on various platforms.
• Sprout Social: Offers comprehensive solutions from content management and analysis to customer communication.
• Canva: Although Canva is primarily a graphic design tool, it plays an important role in the creation of visual content for social media posts and adverts.
• Facebook Ad Manager: A special tool for managing and optimising advertisements on Facebook.

B2B social media marketing

B2B social media marketing focusses on developing and strengthening business relationships between companies through the use of social media.

Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing

Hyperlocal SMM focuses on very small, geographically specific target groups, often with the aim of targeting and retaining local customers.

Other services

Performance marketing - online marketing where advertisers pay for specific, measurable actions such as clicks or sales.

Pharma marketing - Strategies used by pharmaceutical companies to promote medicines and healthcare products in compliance with regulatory requirements.

Medical Writing - Writing scientific documents in the medical field, such as research articles and patient information, with a focus on clear communication.

Data Driven Marketing - making marketing decisions based on data analysis to optimise campaigns and increase ROI.

Healthcare Marketing - Promotion of services and products in the healthcare sector, often in compliance with specific regulatory requirements.

Healthcare Agency - For effective pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. Specialised in digital, social media.