With 4.76 billion people on social media — or more than half the global population — leveraging the medium in your digital marketing strategy is one of the golden tickets to a successful business. When used well, social media can encourage brand awareness, increase customer engagement, foster consumer loyalty, enable businesses to remain relevant, and much more.

However, a brand’s social media presence is only as strong as its social media management. This is an essential component of marketing that extends beyond content calendars and a streamlined publication schedule. It encompasses the entirety of a brand’s social presence and pays just as much attention to reputation management, data and analytics, SEO optimization, and other crucial areas.

This post seeks to answer an important question: “What is social media management?” With the basic practices outlined below, you can build a robust social media management strategy and dramatically improve your business outlook.

What Is Social Media Management?

Social media management uses data, insights, AI, and innovation to help a brand stand out on social media platforms. To expand brand awareness, generate leads, build credibility, and enhance connections with consumers, it concentrates on the following:

• Posting content that aligns with your brand’s identity and message
• Creating posts unique to different social platforms
• Replying to comments and direct and private messages to ensure that consumers feel seen, heard, and understood
• Managing your business’s overall character through social media monitoring, resolving issues that may impact your reputation, and practicing social listening
• Tracking data and analytics to improve social media content and lead generation
• Utilizing paid advertisements

Naturally, this isn’t an exhaustive list of what it entails. Each brand has unique social media account management needs, and yours can be tailored — and adjusted — to satisfy your objectives.

Social Media Management vs. Social Media Marketing

Social media management is often used interchangeably with social media marketing, but the two have distinct differences.

As discussed, social media management is the complete oversight of a business’s social presence. Social media marketing is the act of using social sites to accomplish the aims outlined in a social media management strategy. This includes creating and executing posts and ensuring consistency in voice and presentation.

Why Is Social Media Management Important to Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

The digital landscape is perpetually changing, and social media management is one of the keys to staying on top of it.

This process prioritizes consumer engagement, which affects everything from sales to customer retention. Furthermore, without social media content management, your brand’s image may be at risk, and a poor reputation can sink a brand swiftly — and sometimes irrevocably.

Long-Term Benefits

Well-executed social media management can also benefit your business in the long run by:

• Strengthening brand visibility
• Improving engagement rates and bolstering consumer loyalty
• Boosting word-of-mouth referrals
• Increasing revenue

It also subscribes to the tenet that what cannot be measured cannot be managed. The right social media manager will work toward reaping the most benefits from your social media campaigns.

What Is the Role of a Social Media Manager?

A social media manager oversees how a brand appears to the public on social media platforms. They handle many of the duties outlined above, as well as:

• Evaluating analytics
• Pinpointing trends in consumer relations
• Designing and implementing successful social media campaigns for product launches

Additionally, social media managers are often responsible for running paid advertisements, a digital marketing staple that can increase website traffic and conversions.

What Makes a Successful Social Media Manager?

A social media manager can be enormously beneficial to a brand if they possess the following traits:

• Excellent communication and writing skills
• Outstanding creativity
• Sound organizational and project management skills
• Willingness to change and adopt the best, most current social media management trends

There may be someone on your team who has these characteristics in spades. However, brands save considerable time, money, and other resources by hiring a designated social media manager to handle the myriad and vital social media project management tasks. The last thing you want is to have one of your team members pulled in multiple directions and see their performance suffer. Their entire focus should be your social media management strategy.

Social Media Management: How to Get Started

In addition to finding and designating a solid social media manager, handling the many management tasks begins with getting to know your target audience exceedingly well. This might involve:

• Identifying your audience’s key demographics
• Implementing audience segmentation
• Creating a buyer persona
• Using Meta’s Lookalike feature to find audiences similar to your core demographic when conducting paid advertisements

From here, you and your team can create social media content that will resonate with your target audience and propel them into action.

Choose the Correct Social Media Platforms for Your Brand

Not all social channels are created equal, and your target audience may favor one platform. Using the buyer persona you created, you can identify which platforms best suit your audience. For example:

• LinkedIn is ideal for B2B communication
• TikTok appeals to Gen Z and millennials
• Facebook is popular with baby boomers

Recognizing the social media platform that your audience uses the most can help ensure your posts and paid ads are seen by consumers who might convert.

Why You Should Hire a Social Media Management Agency

Social media account management is exceptionally comprehensive. It extends beyond merely responding to your followers or creating automated posts. Social media is often where consumers form their first impression of you. And remember: public perception of your brand is pivotal to your success.

Given how crucial it is, you should consider hiring a social media management agency. Why? Reputable social media management agencies are laser-focused on this public perception. They’re also filled with consummate professionals who have extensive experience in growing brands to their utmost potential.

MARION is one such agency. As a performance-driven, full-service marketing firm, we offer social media management for small and mid-sized B2B and B2C businesses to help you hone brand identity, boost visibility, attract new customers, and increase conversions. We’ll assign you a dedicated account manager so that all your social media marketing aims aren’t just met but are also executed with style, class, and perfection.

Allow us to be the first touchpoint with many of your existing and prospective consumers so that you can focus on fundamental business operations. Reach out to us today to learn more about our social media management services.

Return on investment in digital marketing is an incredibly valuable business metric that should not be ignored. Several types of integrated marketing channels are available, from social media and email lists to paid ads and in-depth search engine optimization. In order to achieve consistent growth, companies must leverage these channels and follow the proper steps to maintain optimal return on investment.

But which marketing method has the highest impact on overall ROI? Let’s discuss.

What is Digital Marketing ROI?

In the world of digital marketing, Return on Investment (ROI) is known as the measure of profit or loss generated on your campaign efforts. A positive ROI essentially means that a campaign is making more money than what was spent—and vice versa for a negative ROI.

As a rule of thumb, digital marketers should aim for an average ROI of 5:1 — that’s $5 gained for every $1 spent on a marketing campaign.

And if this doesn’t satisfy you, set the bar a little higher! Exceptional marketing ROI is considered 10:1 or higher. It will likely require more resources and knowledge to achieve this goal, but it is possible, nonetheless. On the other hand, ROI below 2:1 is non-profitable and is indicative that your marketing strategy needs some work.

Why Measure ROI in Marketing?

Measuring ROI is critical in digital marketing to determine the success of your campaigns. Otherwise, you would be marketing “blind” and potentially wasting your budget. Obviously, ROI will vary depending on the campaign type and other contributing factors. But by analyzing the results, you will be able to confidently take actionable steps toward improvement. The more familiar you are with marketing ROI, the better your campaigns will perform. In this article, we will discuss which online marketing campaigns have the highest ROI so that you can plan your marketing strategy accordingly.

How To Calculate ROI in Marketing

Calculating ROI values in digital marketing is simple. A basic ROI formula would look something like this:

Top 4 Digital Marketing Strategies for Success

Now that we’ve explained what digital marketing ROI is and how to calculate it, let’s explore a few different campaign strategies that are known for their positive ROI. We’ll explain the pros and cons of each to ultimately decide which strategy offers the best revenue return.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Email Marketing
3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
4. Pay-per-Click (PPC)

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the most successful and widely used digital marketing strategies for growth. When properly executed, SEO marketing can deliver impressive results at a very low cost.

SEO marketing has an average ROI of 22:1 — that’s 2,200 percent!

Effective SEO can give businesses huge opportunities for driving traffic to their website. Plus, the results are long-term. Your site has the potential to continually grow in rankings over the years, delivering positive ROI with little to no effort on your end. For these reasons and more, SEO remains one of the top online marketing strategies for ROI.

2. Email Marketing

Email marketing is reported as one of the highest ROI digital marketing strategies. It’s a well-known method that requires some initial investment but has high success when it comes to exposing your brand to customers.

Email marketing has an average ROI of 42:1 — that’s 4,200 percent!

So, in theory, for every $1 spent on email marketing, you’ll make $42 in return. It’s no wonder why this method is so popular amongst digital marketers. Creating contact lists and sending out emails is relatively cost- and time-effective when compared to other campaign methods. Also, campaign effeteness will only increase as you expand your audience and grow your email list. In addition, email marketing can be used in conjunction with other online marketing strategies for maximum effectiveness.

The primary drawback of email marketing is the fact that it requires having access to a substantial database of customer emails. Tips for building a sizable contact list include using subscription incentives, sign-up lists, and giving customers the ability to create on-site accounts. Follow these steps, and in time, you can expect results and substantial business growth.

If you are going to run an email campaign, you should consider measuring these metrics when calculating your digital marketing ROI:

• Open rate
• Conversions
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Unsubscribe rate
• Bounce rate
• Leads acquired

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is another effective marketing channel that doesn’t require a huge budget or amount of time to succeed. Depending on the extent of your campaign, you can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.

Social media marketing offers several valuable benefits that affect ROI, including:

• Helps customers discover new products
• Sparks positive interactions with consumers
• Provides customer service and engages with followers
• Increases brand traffic and obtains new customers
• Contributes to overall marketing strategy

Measuring social media ROI is a bit more complex than measuring the results you’ll get from other types of digital marketing tactics. In social media marketing, you can determine campaign effectiveness by measuring specific metrics. Below we listed the top metrics marketers use to measure the ROI of social media campaigns.

• Engagement rates
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Clicks
• Conversions
• Leads acquired
• New followers

4. PPC Marketing

When done right, PPC services will generate a positive ROI in digital marketing.

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is much simpler to calculate than the overall ROI for PPC campaigns. The formula is essentially the same as the ROI formula we mentioned previously; it just replaces “marketing” with “PPC.”

This value, however, does not factor in all costs—just the cost of the paid ads. If you want a more precise estimate of your PPC campaign’s profitability, you’ll want to factor in some additional costs, such as:

• technology & equipment
• credit card processing fees
• fulfillment
• employee salaries

Unlike SEO marketing, PPC advertising is not long-term; once you turn the ads off, the campaign is over. The only lasting value is the sales from the ads while they were still active.

Which Digital Marketing Strategy Has the Best ROI?

In conclusion, SEO and email marketing have the best reputation when it comes to ROI. However, keep in mind that PPC and social media marketing are also known to achieve positive ROI.

Now, it’s up to you to maximize the ROI of your online marketing campaign. Will you choose email marketing, PPC, SEO, SMM, or perhaps a combination? Be sure to consider your company, budget, and individual marketing style before making this decision.

Improve Your Marketing ROI With MARION Today

If your company is looking to optimize your digital marketing ROI, MARION is happy to help! We are a marketing agency in Texas with decades of experience delivering strategic search engine optimization, PPC services, and various marketing campaigns.

Contact our team of experts today and find out how we can help you get started with your online marketing strategy.