There’s been no shortage of social and content topics to touch on this year as we continue to navigate the world of platform algorithms, marketing strategies, and creative social trends. What’s a December without your tried, true, and entertaining, year-end recap? While there is plenty to reminisce on, we’d like to highlight a few of the favorite ideas we tapped into this year.
Let’s Go Back to the Beginning: Marketing 101
Marketing has been around and evolving for many generations and we took the time to dive into the various realms of marketing from where we started to where we’ve ended up. Covering everything from traditional marketing to social media and digital marketing to next generation marketing was our pleasure and it helped us get back in touch with the roots of marketing.
The marketing world is extremely diverse — deals and roles are broken up into various segments like paid marketing, organic marketing, print marketing, digital marketing, and more. If you’re unsure where the boundaries are drawn, here’s a refresher.
Traditional marketing tactics are seen everywhere. You find them in your mailbox on a regular basis through grocery store ads or internet company promotions. You see them on screen whether you watch cable or stream. They’re around when you browse the internet and when you browse in stores. There’s really no escape and, as consumers, we’re not necessarily looking for one. Traditional marketing is fully ingrained in our daily lives, so much so that we don’t always catch it on the first go around. They’re not just needed, they can also be utilized in fun and entertaining ways. Just picture Times Square at any given moment or the tradition of ranking Super Bowl ads.
Social media marketing is the next (and one of the newest) level, allowing a back-and-forth relationship between company and customer. These campaigns can be implemented solely using drive and a social media account making it highly accessible for all companies whether they’re giant corporations or local business owners.
As you can see there are advantages to both and while the two may seem worlds apart (ah, the age-old debate of new versus old, print versus digital, etc.), there’s more overlap than you’d think. What’s even cooler is that leveraging both has created some of the best, holistic marketing strategies. What’s the takeaway? All kinds of marketing whether traditional or social has the potential to affect audiences. For the full scoop, take some time to reference our original blog post: Social Media Marketing vs Traditional Marketing.
What’s Meta?
In addition to exploring marketing on a general scale, we also spent a good amount of content manpower discussing the ins and outs of Meta, touching on the social media giant, Facebook and even dipping into Instagram.
Facebook has been widely used since its introduction in the early 2000s and is grouped with some of the earliest social media platforms with old timey pictures of its interface to prove it. What was originally used solely for connecting with others has been revamped and upgraded in hundreds of ways. Now Facebook goes beyond peer-to-peer connections and has led the rest of the world into a new age of marketing.
Ads, videos, Pages, oh my! There’s no shortage of ways to advertise on Facebook. With the growing technology, marketers have also had to adapt and discover innovative ways to keep up while also trying to crack the algorithm. Being visible on this social space has been one of our top priorities in addition to managing active ads. Luckily, we’ve reached a point where we’ve gathered enough knowledge to make good choices when it comes to our Facebook content.
Engagement is key when it comes to Meta. After all, this platform and all other social media marketing platforms were built for social connection. It should seem like a no-brainer, but it really did take some work to get where we are today.
Organic visibility is one route. This is content we are not paying to promote which means how well it holds up is entirely dependent on the expertise of the marketing team. This content needs to be interesting to the audience which means a team needs to have a deep understanding of who they’re speaking to and, just as importantly, who they would like to be speaking to. The goal is to get people to interact with your brand and the diverse media that’s being created.
Paid visibility is an additional plan of attack. Like we mention in our blog post, How to Get Your Facebook Posts Seen By More People, designing ads is an artform. Ad targeting is one area we’ve had the opportunity to really understand. It begins with knowing your business, knowing your audience, knowing your budget, and knowing your content. Beyond that, it requires an effective utilization of the Facebook Ad system. This means understanding each component of the ad, how it plays into your messaging, and how to optimize it.
There’s a lot to break down here but really taking the time to understand your ad objectives, your ad formatting, and your targeting will get you far. Basically, you need to have your purpose in mind, and you need to pick and choose the best way to accomplish it.
Facebook labels ads under three objectives — awareness, consideration, and conversion. It may be obvious to you what you’re trying to achieve, but it’s important to put a name to it so that everyone is on the same page. Once you’ve designated an objective, it comes down to selecting the ad format that gets the story across.
Facebook Ads can get pretty extensive and may require some finessing before you figure out what works and what doesn’t. To make things easier, we’ve summarized it all in our blog post, What are the Different Types of Facebook Ads? We go into detail on everything from objectives to formats to layout and even include a handful of useful examples to help you visualize and brainstorm.
What’s Next?
2022 has taken us through a lot. We’ve had a chance to rediscover and reiterate the very basics of marketing while also refining what we know and preparing for what’s next. While there’s no guarantee of what’s on the horizon for marketers, you can bet that we’ll excitedly have our fingers on the pulse of what’s new as we continue to strengthen all the skills we’ve amassed since we started. Stay tuned as we embrace the world of social media and content marketing in the new year!
Need some assistance with Facebook or other social media ads? Contact us at expert@emfluence.com!
