Creating your social media marketing campaign: the ultimate guide

When social media networks were in their infancy, few brands made a coordinated effort to establish a presence, much less execute a strategy on these platforms—and it showed. Companies didn’t study demographics, or set measurable goals, or embrace the power of “social listening.”

And there weren’t many social media marketing specialists who knew they could build a career path from their trailblazing efforts. Many organizations handed their social channels over to a freshly-graduated intern, and called it a day. 

Today, few brands would dispute that social media has become an essential component of marketing. 90% of Millennials use social media and the average American spends a remarkable three hours per day on social networks and messaging.

Social media marketing has become a vital business discipline that applies marketing principles to the practice of activating and managing brands on social media channels. Yet, gaps remain. While 73% of marketers believe social media marketing is “somewhat or very effective” for their business, nearly 20% are unsure of how to measure its effectiveness.

Said another way: just because your brand has social media, doesn’t mean you have a social media marketing strategy. And this is a huge opportunity—CoSchedule reports that “marketers with a documented strategy are 313% more likely to report success.” Ditto for planning. The same study said proactive planners are 356% more likely to achieve success.  

Read on to learn how to plan a social media marketing campaign that’s aligned with your goals, and designed to move the needle. 

What is a social media marketing campaign?

A social media marketing campaign includes both a strategy and a set of tactics focused on a primary business objective—your goals on social might be lead generation, building website traffic, or improving brand or product awareness. It may even be all of the above...just be sure you’ve isolated your top priority.

Most social campaigns now rely heavily on paid promotion—a go-to tactic to reach target audiences on social media networks. Paid campaigns allow you to target people both inside and outside of your followers list, be highly specific about who you reach, and will generally boost engagement with your organic (aka unpaid) content too. 

Another way to reach a bigger audience is through influencer marketing on social. Both consumer and B2B brands often also seek out influencer endorsements on social networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. If you work in B2B, your influencers might not be household-name celebrities, but command attention as subject matter experts, and you might compensate them for participating in webinars or events.

How to set goals for your social media marketing campaign

Goals set the heartbeat of a social media marketing campaign. Many social teams begin with basic goals such as driving more traffic to your brand’s content, increasing engagement with your posts, or even growing your follower lists.

How do you know if you’re setting clear goals for your campaign? Many marketing programs pursue so-called SMART goals—an acronym that stands for objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. For example, when it comes to specifics, name which members of your team will join the campaign, how the campaign will be funded, and which goals your team aims to accomplish. Whether you choose to use the SMART framework or not, the most important part of setting goals is that your whole team (including stakeholders) is bought in.

How to start your social media marketing campaign

Social media has its own distinct rules of engagement. While some tried-and-true principles always apply—for example, speaking authentically, or always giving your audience something valuable—the way that your audience uses social media is constantly evolving. Platforms (even the big ones) come in and out of favor; habits shift; yesterday’s best practice becomes tomorrow’s major faux pas.

Use these tips to get grounded in the current social climate, and get your marketing campaigns rolling. 

Tip 1: Analyze the competition

Keeping a close eye on your competitors will give you new ideas—and probably some examples of what not to do. Take a note if their tactics shift quickly, if they’re getting critical comments, or if they’re reacting to another competitor’s campaigns. And when a competitor’s campaign tactic works, ask your team how you might have improved it.

If you have the bandwidth (or the ability to hire an agency), take a deeper dive. Do your competitors post more or less frequently than you? How often do they share original content, re-post other content, or engage in organic conversations? How have their follower counts grown month-over-month? What do you assume are their primary goals? All of this info will help you craft your strategy.

Tip 2: Find your target audience 

Nearly every brand’s marketing plan includes buyer personas. If you work for a B2B company, your personas might be heavy on firmographics (like job title or company size), which makes it difficult to reach them on largely-personal social media platforms. For this reason, many B2B companies focus on networking platforms like LinkedIn, where you may be able to target based on the most important criteria to your business. 

But don’t be afraid to think beyond the big four—for example, if you’re trying to reach technology practitioners, you may find that Reddit, rather than LinkedIn or Facebook, is the best place to target your paid social promotion. 

Fortunately, all social media networks provide some level of user data to help you track down your target audience. Armed with these insights, you can tailor both your content and your campaign tactics to drive higher engagement. You may determine that one social network is better suited than others for reaching an influential segment of your target audience, while another is necessary to maintain your brand's credibility with investors or reporters. And of course, you'll tailor your content output accordingly, which brings us to...

Tip 3: Choose the right content for your channels

Once you’ve identified the channels you’ll focus on and the audience you intend to reach, you may see performance discrepancies from one channel to another. You might find that short videos on a particular topic, for instance, perform well for your brand on LinkedIn but surprisingly poorly on Facebook. You’ll start with an educated guess, but pay close attention to performance, and prepare to be proven wrong.

This is another place where close attention to your competition pays off—assuming you have similar audiences, their content performance might help you understand your own. 

Tip 4: Engage with users

While much of your strategy will likely focus on paid ads, you’ll also need to invest in organic conversations with your followers. This might look like reposting content from reputable sources in your space, chiming in on popular posts or hashtags, or simply thanking your users for engaging with you.

Power your social media strategy with Airtable

Nearly anyone can write and send a tweet—successful brands pull together a strategy, a plan, a good team and a strong set of tools before launching their first paid campaigns.

Finding a tool that can help your brand manage every stage of its social media marketing campaigns can make a critical difference with your program. Using Airtable, everyone on your social team can view their assignments, track the campaign’s progress, and see how everyone works together to make it a success. 

Get started with our Marketing Campaign Tracking Template to connect your social strategy to your full campaigns, or our Social Media Calendar to plan individual posts and themes.