Want to Make Your Social Marketing Stand Out? Read This.

You know what we dislike more than anything at Jacob Tyler? Boring social media marketing. OK, well, any boring marketing and advertising, but we’re talking about social media today.

Just take a look around. Boring work is everywhere. Now look at the social media marketing landscape and it’s multiplied by a million. Why is that? It’s because social media is ubiquitous and has a low barrier to entry that anyone can now become a “marketer” there. But great marketing isn’t created with an Instagram account and an iPhone X alone. It’s so much more than that. And so the result is there is an insane amount boring marketing messages online.

And although it gives us an edge, we’d much rather see great work that inspires and makes us think, “Damn, we should’ve thought of that!” We believe that great work begets great work.

That’s why we’re sharing our tried-and-true three point method (with a bonus tip at the end) for creating standout marketing for social media. Pay attention, because each bullet builds on the previous.

First, Set Objectives Before Literally Anything Else

Making an impact in the news feed doesn’t mean much if you don’t eventually make an impact on the bottom line. So you need to have a marketing objective in place that leads to tangible business outcomes. This objective is the north star that guides your strategy which then drives your tactics. If you don’t know exactly what your objective is you won’t be working with intention and purpose — and you won’t stand out to your target audience!

Here’s an example,  “Our objective is to create mass awareness for [company/brand/product] among Gen-X dads in the Ohio metropolitan market.”

Is the objective bland? Yeah, usually it is, but that’s OK because it’s 100% necessary.

Next, Know Your Audience Like They’re Family

If you’re in marketing and not clearly defining your audience, go ahead and just flush your cash down the toilet (better yet, call us). After objectives, audience is everything. You need to know who you’re talking to, why they’d care about what you have to offer, what drives them, how old they are, where they live, and so on. This is going to be very important as you continue forward because you need to know who you want your customers to be.

Here’s an example building on our objective from the previous paragraph: “Our audience are Gen-X dads in Ohio who are urban dwelling professionals with a household income of $100K+. They are weekend gym warriors who are looking for a way to maximize their workout efforts. They care about what they put into their body and want to get the most out of their adult lives.”

When you clearly define your audience you can target them with a message that resonates.

And Make Great Creative Like Your Job Depends On It (Because It Might)

Speaking of a message that resonates. You know what you want to do (objective), and you know who you want to go after (audience). It’s time for the holy grail of advertising, marketing, and communications: the creative. The words and imagery you use are the differentiator in this game. Great creative builds a bridge between your audience and your brand, and by that it helps you achieve your objectives. But it has must be memorable. If you follow this framework your marketing content will sing in a way that grabs attention and makes the intended audience think, “Just take my money already!”

Real quick though, we know we said it like it was easy, but great creative is hard. It take a lot of time and effort and a scrupulous eye for detail.

BONUS TIP!

We find that although a lot of folks know the above points, they still don’t put the effort in to doing it really well. Bummer for them. But guess what: even if they do know that stuff and even if they put it into place every time, 99% of them don’t have this capability in their social media marketing tool belt.

What’s the secret weapon? BE INSANELY NIMBLE.

That’s right. This is social media, not print advertising, TV commercials, or billboards. You’re not locked into anything for a month at a time. You have the ability to look at what’s working and double down. You can look at what’s not working and cut it. And you can do it quickly. Because time moves crazy fast online. Sudden opportunity? Take advantage. Relevant trending topics? Capitalize on it. Analyze often and optimize when you need to. It’s the only way to make sure you’re never doing boring work.

Final Thoughts

We’ve pretty much just helped you develop a framework for a social media marketing strategy that can actually work. From here you’ll just need to plug in some tactical pieces (easier said than done, we know) and get down to business. Standing out on social is hard. It takes time and effort. But use the above to guide you and we’re certain you’ll be on the right track in no time.

Hey, it’s worked for us.