March 22, 2023
March 22, 2023
SoMe is a contraction of ‘Social Media’, but it is often used as an abbreviation for marketing on social media.
A social media platform is where users create their own content and interact with each other. Hence the word ‘social’ in Social Media.
Examples of social media include:
Each platform offers its users something unique, whether it’s the way they interact with each other or the type of content they can post.
Common for all social media is that users document parts of their lives on them. They thereby provide the platform with some private information, which gives the platform access to understand its users in a completely unique way.
It is this access to user data that has made ‘SoMe’ marketing so popular. It allows you to advertise on platforms where users have given you all the information about them that you can use for targeted marketing. Useful information for your marketing could be whether the person has children or not, marital status, occupation, interests, and more.
But which social media platforms should you focus on? A smart marketing employee selects a few SoMe channels and focuses on succeeding on them rather than half-heartedly using many. These channels are selected based on the purpose of the marketing and the target audience.
What does SoMe mean for your business?
Depending on what your business does, SoMe should play a greater or lesser role in your marketing mix. In B2B contexts, you should consider including SoMe in your branding efforts as well as employer branding – i.e. to brand yourself to potential employees. In addition, B2B companies can also benefit greatly from advertising, especially on LinkedIn.
In B2C contexts, SoMe is more about being on the platforms your customers are on. So, you need to have a relatively good understanding of who your target audience is, so you make sure you are on the platforms they are on.
Whether you are B2B or B2C, SoMe marketing is about reaching the target audience on the channels where they are.
If you have a product that is not well-known, or if you solve a known challenge in a completely new way, it is precisely about “pushing” your message directly to your target audience – you cannot wait for them to find you via search engines.
Social media can be effectively used for four things:
- Increase brand awareness – promoting your brand to attract customers and increase sales.
- Generate leads – the most common social media platforms offer good opportunities to generate leads.
- Employer branding – social media is a powerful tool for attracting talent.
- Create sales – especially Facebook and Instagram can create sales for your webshop through, for example, dynamic product ads.
SoMe as a lead channel
Whether social media can be used to generate leads or not depends on what you can offer your target audience.
To get a lead – i.e. gain access to some information that enables you to contact people or alternatively gives you access to target them with your marketing afterwards – you should offer your target audience something of value for free, which they can access as “exchange” for their contact details.
SoMe channels can generate both Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), the crucial thing is that the target audience and the message match.
Common strategies for generating MQLs and SQLs include:
MQL:
- Signing up for a newsletter
- Downloading whitepapers
- Downloading e-books
- Participating in webinars
- The person has viewed x% of some video content
SQL:
- Phone calls
- Completing contact forms
- Sales emails
- Booking demos
- Ordering a free analysis or evaluation.
The significance of social media in the future
Looking into my crystal ball, I predict that social media will continue to grow. What? Big surprise 😉
However, I’m not talking about existing media growing. Social media came to Denmark in the 00s, and in the small 20 years since then, many new ones have emerged, and the target audiences on the different platforms have changed several times.
When Facebook was released, it was for young students – now the majority of active users are Generation X. Instagram was where all the young people fled when all the parents joined Facebook. Now Instagram is mainly used by Millennials – and despite the fact that we often think that Millennials are young, they are people aged 25-40 years 😊
So, to make a long story short, I predict that:
- The user segment on each channel will constantly change.
- More media will emerge.
- Some media will die – can anyone remember DKBN, Arto, MySpace, Friendster? No? Just because a media is big today, doesn’t mean it will be big “tomorrow.”
The smart marketing employee selects a few social media channels and focuses on succeeding on these, rather than going half-heartedly on many. These channels are selected based on the purpose of the marketing and which target audience one wants to reach.
