How to Develop a Digital Media Buying Strategy on Social Media
Regardless of the brand you represent, the size of your company, or the foundation you have built, developing a digital media buying strategy is essential for maintaining structure and growth for your brand. The fundamentals that make up your social media buying strategy include advertising, employees, the software you use, etc. There are many steps that need to be taken when developing a buying strategy for your business. Having a digital marketing agency such as Bright Age will help you through this systematic process.
The first step in developing a digital media buying strategy is to determine goals and set a budget at the beginning of the year. These social media goals vary upon the company, but overall, they should be things that you plan on putting money into. For example, if one of your goals is to create more engaging advertisements, you may be putting a large sum of money into paid social media ads. This is something you would put in your budget, which is the next leap in developing a digital media buying strategy. It is a way to keep track of costs, determine your social ROI, and overall to make sure you are not using more than you have. It can be a traditional budget, where you start with a sum of money, allocating amounts of each category, a flexible budget, where if one category runs out of money and another one has some to spare, you would just move it over, or a zero budget, where you basically start every category with a budget of zero dollars, increasing the amounts per category while justifying the cost every time.
Social media is ever evolving, so it is important to determine exactly when it is a good idea to take a “leap of faith” and jump into something drastic. As the social world evolves, you must evolve with it, which may be overwhelming. With this said, new features on social media platforms are something that you may want to incorporate into your social media strategy. Unique content creation, paid advertisements, and creative promotions are all things that will help your audience identify your brand. These are also things to incorporate into your budget. Content creation takes time, money, and creativity, which is what a digital marketing agency will help maintain. Speaking strictly on advertising, this is one of the biggest budget areas. The best way to determine where to put most of the advertising money, would be to first determine which social media channel is most relevant to your brand. If your most engaging channel is Instagram, it would make the most sense to put more advertising money toward that specific network. Depending on what industry your brand falls under, the cost per click will vary.
The software your company is using is something to consider as well. Making sure you are using what is necessary for your brand is the key component when determining what subscriptions to be a part of, and what to renew on a monthly basis. Analytics tools are essential for many companies using social media for marketing. A social media agency will manage this for your brand when evaluating your social media report. This will track things such as live engagement, cost per click, follower rate, likes, etc., which in return will help you determine what category to spend more time in.
Influencer marketing is one of the biggest topics in the social media world today. A decade ago, that sentence would read differently. Because of brand deals, influencer marketing has been widely used especially in the past few years. This is a great tool to use if applicable to your brand. For example, clothing, wellness and beauty, and makeup brands use this tactic a lot. Influencer marketing tends to follow the more authentic, casual appeal when choosing what photos to post while representing your brand. The influencer marketing industry is huge. In fact, the industry is set to reach $10 billion in worth by 2020, which is why many companies are taking advantage of this opportunity if it fits their brand image.
Analyzing what, where, when, and how to incorporate specific segments into your brand’s budget for the following year can be overwhelming. While we have highlighted many things to consider in this decision-making process, incorporating a digital marketing agency into your brand will immensely help this process. The digital world as we know it is only projected to increase in size, which is why it is essential to know what to represent when developing a digital media buying strategy on social media.
