Social Media Marketing in Cornwall: The Ultimate Guide (2024)
Social media marketing has become an integral part of many businesses' marketing strategies, and for good reason. With over 4.6 billion active users worldwide, social media platforms offer a massive audience for businesses to connect with and promote their products or services. In Cornwall, social media marketing has become especially important for local businesses looking to expand their reach and connect with customers in the region. In this article, we'll explore the basics of social media marketing, types of social media ads, advertising strategies, and tips for creating effective social media ads. Whether you're new to social media marketing or looking to improve your current strategy, this article will provide valuable insights and actionable tips to help you succeed.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing refers to the process of using social media platforms to promote a product, service, or brand. It involves creating and sharing content on social media networks, engaging with followers, and running paid advertising campaigns to reach a wider audience.
Brief overview of the importance of social media marketing
Social media has revolutionized the way people communicate, interact, and consume information and its importance is only set to grow. With 137 million new users having come online in the last twelve months, social media is perhaps the most powerful tool businesses have to reach their target audience and build a strong online presence.
As a super quick overview, social media marketing can help businesses to:
Increase brand visibility and awareness
Build relationships with customers and followers
Drive traffic to their website or online store
Generate leads and sales
Gain valuable insights about their target audience
Social media marketing in Cornwall
In Cornwall, social media marketing has become an increasingly important part of the marketing mix for businesses in various industries, from tourism and hospitality to creative and tech startups. As a tourism hotspot, Cornwall attracts an enormous amount of attention online, the good news for local businesses is that they’re in the prime spot to benefit from all that digital activity, connecting with ever wider audiences through social media and sharing high value content to the residents and the floods of annual tourists alike.
Organic vs Paid social advertising
So what’s the difference between social media marketing and social media advertising? On the whole, social media marketing refers to unpaid, organic methods of promoting your products and services through social media. This is all about creating and sharing interesting, informative content with your followers, building a strong social media presence and creating a loyal customer base. On the other hand, social media advertising involves paying to promote your content to a specific audience. Both organic and paid social media efforts can be super effective for businesses in Cornwall and beyond, but they involve different approaches and tactics, so it's important to understand the difference between the two and figure out which one works best for your business goals.
Let's start with a quick dip into how you can market on social media for free!
Unpaid Social Media Marketing in Cornwall
Unpaid social media marketing refers to the process of promoting a brand or product without spending money on advertising. This type of marketing is often referred to as organic social media marketing. While it can take longer to see results from unpaid social media marketing, it can be a cost-effective way for businesses to build their brand and engage with their target audience. You can start with nothing but a social media account and start engaging with your target audience from day one.
Importance of Incorporating Unpaid Marketing into a Social Media Strategy
This makes unpaid social media marketing an especially powerful tool for businesses with a limited budget or in the start up phase, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect it as you grow. Organic social media marketing should always be one of the key pillars in your social media marketing strategy. For one, it can be totally free if you’re prepared to do it yourself, it also allows you to interact with your audience and followers, liking their posts, commenting on their content, and exchanging messages, in short - connecting with your audience in a way that paid advertising cannot. This personal touch can really help businesses build brand awareness and foster a loyal following online.
Examples of Unpaid Social Media Marketing
Influencer Marketing: This involves partnering with social media influencers to promote your brand or product to their followers. This can be done through sponsored posts, giveaways, or product reviews.
User-generated Content: Encouraging your followers to create content related to your brand or product and sharing it on social media can help increase engagement and build brand awareness.
Hashtag Campaigns: Creating a branded hashtag and encouraging your followers to use it can help increase visibility and engagement on social media platforms.
Tips for Effective Unpaid Social Media Marketing
Know Your Audience:
This one isn’t quite as obvious as it sounds! It’ll be no news to you that you need to be pitching your brand, ideas, and products to the right people and whilst you might know exactly who visits your business and buys your products, they might not all be hanging out in the same place online. Different social media platforms have different audiences and demographics, each looking for a different kind of experience when using each app. You might find that your business connects with a slightly older demographic on Facebook than Instagram, allowing you the opportunity to tailor your messaging and offers to those specific users. It can take a while to figure out who’s looking at your content from where, but it’s well worth your time and results in content that actually engages and resonates with your audience.
Stop trying to sell and start providing value:
People use social media for a whole host of reasons beyond those that the apps were originally invented for. Platforms like Instagram have transcended photo sharing and now bring people everything from global news and how to guides, to the jaw-dropping photos it was developed to share. For the most part though, people are online to relax and unwind, not to be pestered with advertising. Creating content that is informative, entertaining, or educational blends into this experience, subtly building brand awareness by aligning your products and services with the kind of stories you’re sharing, without pushing your audience away. Remember, you want to build trust with your audience, so answer the questions and provide content they want to watch, not just shots of your shiny new product.
Engage with Your Followers:
Responding to comments and messages from your followers is a crucial, yet often underutilized, method to build your audience. A strategic approach involves commenting on content from other popular pages. This tactic places your brand directly in the line of sight of a broader audience, far beyond your existing followers. By crafting insightful, engaging comments on these pages, you capture the attention of a diverse group of users who may not have discovered your brand otherwise. This visibility in the comments section of well-followed pages serves as a powerful tool for brand awareness. An interesting comment can spark curiosity and encourage interactions, leading to increased brand recognition and interest. It's an effective way to introduce your brand to potential customers who frequent these popular pages, turning their comment sections into gateways for new audience engagement.
Try setting aside a few hours a week to simply commenting on the top content from pages in your sector, you’ll be amazed by the results!
Summary of the Benefits of Unpaid Social Media Marketing
Incorporating unpaid social media marketing into a social media strategy can be an effective way for businesses to build their brand, engage with their target audience, and even sell their products or services. By creating valuable content, engaging with followers, and building relationships with customers, businesses can establish themselves as industry leaders and grow their online presence without spending money on advertising.
Organic social media marketing can be an incredibly powerful tool, helping businesses to build a base of loyal customers and providing them with valuable, relevant content. However, as with a lot of things, you can pay to get a leg up on the competition and catapult your marketing to the next level. Paid advertising on social media allows businesses to target very specific audiences, putting their ads in front of the people most likely to engage with their brand and purchase their products. In the next section, we’ll cover the basics of paid social media advertising and best practices for success.
Let’s start with the basics.
What are social media ads?
Types of Social Media Ads
Social media ads come in various formats, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of the most common types of social media ads:
Image Ads: These are simple ads that consist of a single image and a caption. They are easy to create and can be effective in generating brand awareness and engagement.
Video Ads: Video ads are more engaging than image ads as they can convey more information and emotions. They can be in the form of short stories, tutorials, or product demonstrations.
Carousel Ads: Carousel ads are a series of images or videos that users can swipe through. They are useful for showcasing multiple products or services in a single ad.
Collection Ads: Collection ads are a combination of image or video ads and an Instant Experience, a full-screen landing page that enables users to explore products or services in more detail.
Sponsored Posts: Sponsored posts are native ads that appear in a user's news feed. They blend in with organic content and are often used to promote events, products, or services.
Top-tip: A great way to start running these ads is by simply boosting posts on Facebook and Instagram. This handy built in feature allows you to turn a post into an ad in just a couple of clicks. Pick posts that are already resonating with your audience and boost them to get them in front of a wider group of people. Be mindful here that you won’t have as much control over your audience and location, so use boosted posts wisely.
In the next section, we'll look at how to advertise social media marketing and best practices for creating effective ads.
Four Parts of a Social Media Ad (the anatomy of a great ad)
A social media ad typically consists of four main parts: the headline, the text, the visual, and the call-to-action. Here's how to create effective ads for each part:
Headline: The headline should grab the viewer's attention and clearly communicate the main benefit or value proposition of the product or service.
Copy: The text should provide additional information about the product or service and convince the viewer to take action. It should be concise, persuasive, and include a clear call-to-action (CTA) that tells the viewer what to do next.
Visual: The visual element of an ad should be eye-catching and relevant to the product or service being advertised. It should convey the main message of the ad and evoke emotions that resonate with the target audience.
Call-to-Action (CTA): The CTA is the most important part of a social media ad as it tells the viewer what action to take next. It should be clear, concise, and prominently displayed in the ad. Common CTAs include "Learn More," "Sign Up," "Shop Now," or "Contact Us."
Tips for Creating Effective Social Media Ads
To create effective social media ads, businesses should consider the following tips:
Know your target audience:
Understanding the target audience is critical in creating effective social media ads. This includes knowing their demographics, interests, and behaviors. Just like with organic social media marketing, knowing who you’re selling to is one of the most important factors, the difference between unpaid and paid is that here you can actively control who sees your ads. This can be used in two ways, either to double down and your core audience - if you have a tight grasp on who’s buying your products you can target them and get a much more efficient ad with a much better return on investment (ROI) - or you can purposefully target a group outside your regular customers to build awareness in another community or launch a new product aimed at a different audience!
There’s a bit of a knack for dialing in the right parameters when it comes to setting up custom audiences, but Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company) makes it fairly simply to do with Meta Ads Manager.
Use high-quality visuals:
This one goes without saying but it’s always worth restating. Use images that people actually want to see! You’ve worked far too hard on your products and services for a shoddy image to let them down. The visuals used in social media ads should be high-quality and attention-grabbing to capture the audience's attention.
Keep the copy short and sweet:
The copy used in social media ads should be concise and to the point. Use clear language to communicate the message. Audiences online are increasingly time and attention poor, you’ve only got them for a few seconds, use them wisely!
Include a call-to-action:
A clear call-to-action is essential in encouraging users to take action after seeing the ad. Don’t leave it up to chance, tell people what you want them to do.
Set clear goals and objectives:
Businesses should set specific goals for their social media advertising campaigns, such as increasing website traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales, without them, you’ve got no way to test how your ad is doing or know how to improve them.
Test, test and test again!
This one requires quite a bit of time and energy if you’re looking to do it yourself but is the number one way to craft ads that get results. You may think you know exactly what your audience wants to see, what their pain points are and how you can solve them, but you’ll never really know the best way to communicate that information to them if you don’t test multiple variations. Carousels may be better for your audience, or it may be short videos, it could be images of products for the technofiles or no image at all. And let’s not even get started on the different variations of language and rhetoric in your copy. At the very least you want to be creating two different versions of each ad and testing them to see which one does better before committing your full ad spend budget to them.
Platforms like Meta Ads Manager are free to use with a business Facebook page and will provide you with a wealth of information on your ads, from click through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), cost per 1000 impressions (CPM - the M stands for mile), the total number of people reached, and much more! All this will give you a clearer picture of how your ads are performing.
Social Media Marketing for Beginners
If you’re just starting out, social media marketing can be overwhelming, but it's essential for businesses to establish a strong online presence and engage with their audience. Here are some tips for getting started:
Choose the right social media platforms: Businesses should choose the social media platforms where their target audience is most active and where they can showcase their products or services effectively. Facebook tends to have a slightly older crowd who are more receptive to traditional marketing strategies, as a photo and video sharing platform, Instagram has a younger crowd who are more ad aware and will need to be entertained or informed via valuable content to be receptive to your messaging. Looking to connect with Gen-Z? Get on Tik-Tok, Snapchat, and Youtube. Trying to hit home with the professionals? LinkedIn is the way for you!
Create a content strategy: A content strategy should include the types of content to post, the frequency of posting, and the tone and voice of the brand. It should also align with the business's goals and target audience. This includes mapping out where each demographic from your customer base is hanging out online and crafting a content strategy unique to each one. Not everyone who buys your products wants to see the same content in the same way. Give people a reason to follow you on all platforms by posting unique content on each one!
Engage with the audience: Remember, social media is a two-way communication channel, and businesses should engage with their audience by responding to comments, messages, and mentions. Build trust with your audience, don’t be just another faceless brand without a human touch.
In the next section, we'll look at the effectiveness of social media ads and how to measure their performance.
How Much Does a Social Media Ad Cost?
One of the most common questions businesses have about social media advertising is how much it costs. The answer to this question depends on a variety of factors, including the platform being used, the target audience, and the ad placement. In this section, we'll explore the cost of social media ads and how businesses can budget for them.
Explanation of the Cost of Social Media Ads
Social media ads can be relatively affordable compared to other forms of advertising, and are very easy to scale to your available budget. You can get started with as little as £5 a day, putting together impactful campaigns for £100 or less. The cost of a social media ad is typically determined by the platform being used and the type of ad being run. For example, Facebook ads are typically more expensive than Twitter or Instagram ads but at the end of the day it’s going to depend on how well you know your audience.
How to get the most for your money with social media ads.
To get the best ROI on your social media ads there’s a few key factors to consider.
Target audience:
This is the number one way to increase your ROI. You don’t want to spend precious marketing budget pushing your products to people who are never going to buy it. Knowing who you target audience is and where they live (especially important if you’re a local or regional business) will allow you to target those likely to buy and avoid wasting money on the wrong people.
Remember, that sometimes you might want to run ads specifically to target people who are outside your established audience in brand awareness campaigns. Platforms like Ads Manager allow you to get very specific, targeting age, gender, and geographical location as well as likes and interests. It can be difficult to calculate ROI with these kinds of campaigns as you likely won’t see a big increase in sales (nor is it the goal to) but instead are committing resources to broadening your customer base. This in turn will allow you to better leverage your unpaid social media marketing!
Ad format:
Different ad formats, such as video ads or carousel ads, can impact the cost of an ad.
Bidding strategy:
Social media platforms use an auction-style bidding system, with advertisers bidding against each other for ad placement. If you’re trying to get the most out of your money it can sometimes be beneficial to avoid the most contested spots and instead commit to winning ad space in less prominent locations. This might sound counterintuitive but there are lots of great opportunities to get your brand in front of your audience on social media - the important thing here is to make sure your ad is perfectly crafted to convert, something you can hone when in the testing phase!
In conclusion, social media marketing and advertising are essential for businesses to reach a wider audience and achieve their marketing goals. By understanding the different types of social media ads, how to advertise on social media, and how to measure the effectiveness of ads, businesses can create successful campaigns that resonate with their target audience. As a social media first creative agency in Cornwall, we specialize in creating social media ads that drive results for our clients. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business succeed on social media or check out our list of the top social media marketing agencies in Cornwall to find your perfect partner!
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