Best Practices for Social Media Marketing in Los Angeles
Discover some the best practices for social media marketing in Los Angeles. It is essential to define your target market and determine what engages them.
Target Market:
First things first! This may seem basic, but it is constantly glossed over. Know who your audience IS and who you WANT your audience to be. I can’t emphasize this enough. In a large urban area like Los Angeles people are constantly bombarded with marketing messages and the majority of those messages may not even apply to them. This has created a culture of people who tune out advertising. If you are trying to sell ice cubes to Eskimos, you are failing, not to mention, probably wasting time and money. Be very clear about who you are marketing to and why before you even begin creating a marketing campaign. If you are planning to do social media marketing in Los Angeles, get even more specific and consider hiring a Los Angeles Marketing Agency. This is the only way to create real relationships with real clients.
Engage your Target Market:
This applies to social media marketing in Los Angeles or any large urban city for that matter.
It is no longer effective or acceptable to simply advertise at or to people. You must engage with people on a different level. Everything is interactive these days and demands an “experience” rather than just a message. This is where social media marketing comes into play. Everyone knows that this is essential to any business that wants to succeed in todays market. Businesses need awareness to survive! The companies that are good at social media marketing are the companies that thrive. You have your work cut out for you! Here are a few suggestions:
-Minimally you need to have a website, Facebook page, Twitter account and LinkedIn profile.
-If what you offer will benefit from beautiful visual marketing and photos consider Tumblr and Pinterest accounts as well.
-Make sure all of your web based social marketing is consistently well integrated with photos, logos and brand recognition. Make sure all of those files that are uploaded are the proper sizes. There is nothing more unprofessional looking than logos that don’t fit in specified parameters.
-Use the above sites to engage your current clients and recruit potential new clients by 1. constantly generating fresh and engaging content that your audience will relate to and want to share with others and 2. giving them reasons to engage such as contests, coupons and surveys. These are things that create brand loyalty and familiarity. Check out sites like Woobox and Survey Monkey to see how you can integrate them into your social media marketing in Los Angeles.
-Use the direct advertising services of these social media marketing platforms – On Facebook, LinkedIn and Google target customers by placing CPC (cost per click) ads in the sightline of your specified audience. You can appeal to people in a certain zip code radius and even get as specific as industry, education level, job title and favorite bands! To have the most cost effective ad campaign, know your target market!
-Consider mobile commerce and how it applies to your industry. Mobile commerce is currently growing exponentially. Perhaps there is some targeted app development in your future?
-Build smart contact lists and offer a newsletter and a blog. Again, offer ways to interact through coupons, contests surveys, fresh content and information. People today are information addicts. You must target and then retarget your audience with emotion. Ask for their opinion. Generic marketing no longer works. Knowing who your target audience is will make developing your fresh content much easier.
-Keep track of your data! Which add campaigns worked and which tanked? In order to evolve and grow your strategy you must constantly evaluate the effectiveness of your social media marketing techniques.
Remember, people want more than information, they want experiences. How can you give your audience an experience? If this all sounds like another full time job, that is because it is! Hire a professional. Especially in a big city like Los Angeles, it is absolutely necessary to have a professional Los Angeles Marketing Agency on your side who knows your target market and will manage the social media impact and image of your company accordingly.