Skyrocket your Social Media Marketing With An Online Course
Social media marketing changed the way we advertise and it’s a great way to find new customers and grow your audience. Social networks are an easy and accessible place for advertising, so it’s beneficial if you’re trying to build your brand or sell products/services.
It’s an important way for companies big and small to share their products or services, but it can be difficult to know where to start.
Luckily, there are plenty of courses offered online that teach the ins and outs of how to use social media effectively as a business.
This blog post explores how you can benefit from social media marketing online courses.
Benefits of using social media for marketing purposes:
Before we explore social media courses, let’s consider some of the benefits of using social media to market your products and services.
1. Social media is a great way to connect with your target audience because everyone is on social media these days
2. Organic marketing is free, so it will save you money and time in the long run
3. You can promote your offers using paid ads on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube
4. You’ll be able to build relationships with customers that might not have otherwise been possible
5. By using social media for marketing purposes, you’ll be able to increase brand awareness and create more sales opportunities on social media
6. Your company will also be seen by new people who may not know about it yet!
What your social media marketing really is
If you think it’s just boosting a couple of posts and taking selfies all day, we need to talk.
Social media marketing is about creating posts and advertising with the express interest of acquiring a lead or sale.
You’re running a business, remember?
It’s about using these incredible digital tools and placing your products and services in front of people you can sell to. Your ideal client is on social media, but you need to find them!
And it’s a lot of work. It’s not just about posting great content and hoping for the best, it takes time to create campaigns that will really make an impact on your audience.
The first aspect is what we call organic marketing — this is the blog writing and posting on your social media platforms. It includes your Stories, Lives, IGTV, YouTube and so forth. It’s the time and effort you spend on building your online brand and spending time on social media.
The second aspect is paid marketing — this is where the rubber meets the road and you’re serious about growing and expanding your impact. This is not about likes and follows, it’s about converting people into paying customers.
Paid marketing (running Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads) is what we specialise in at Big Domino Marketing.
If you want to be a social media pro it’s crucial that you understand what marketing is and how it works before diving into any courses.
Why you need social media marketing in your business
So now that you know what online marketing is and how it could potentially benefit your profits, let’s look at a few more features and benefits:
1. It’s is a necessity in today’s society — your target audience is using social media!
2. It can shorten the time taken to succeed!
3. There are many ways to use social media for marketing purposes
4. Examples of how you can use your social media for marketing include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest, to name a few
5. All these platforms offer different features that help you grow
6. With an optimized strategy and hard work, there is no reason why you won’t be successful with your social media campaign!
The importance of having a social media marketing strategy
As important as it is to embrace online marketing, you also need to have a solid marketing plan.
You will need a good social media strategy to make the community aware that your company exists. You will want to tell them what you sell and how it can help them.
Simply put, a “digital marketing strategy” is akin to laying out a step-by-step plan for potential customers to follow which will lead them towards your product or service.
This is so important whether you sell digital products worldwide, or whether you’re a local business in South Africa.
Imagine you’ve just opened up a local business but barely anyone knows it exists.
You’ll need a powerful strategy to make the local community aware of what you sell and how it can help them.
So we need to take a two-pronged approach.
The first step is to build brand awareness and the second would be to create a lead generation campaign.
One of the biggest problems we see in the industry is that people focus way too much on building brand awareness (trying to get likes and new followers) and very little on lead generation to lead to sales.
Our online courses focus primarily on lead generation because it kills two birds with one stone.
Why you should invest in a social media marketing course
If you’re a solo entrepreneur or run a small business, chances are you don’t have the budget to hire a marketing agency (yet!).
You might agree that marketing is essential to sustain and grow your sales, and you are prepared to do it yourself… if only you knew how!
You also don’t want to waste your precious time posting and “hoping” that something sticks.
The thing is, by signing up to be your own boss, you accepted the responsibility of having a growth mindset. This means that you are keen to learn new things and gain new skills to benefit your business.
This drive and hunger to be better and do better is what entrepreneurs are made of!
We wrote an entire article on the importance of upskilling, read it here.
So of course you want to learn how to market your business online!
It’s really important that you understand how online marketing works so that one day when you can afford a marketing agency you’ll know just what’s possible.
What Can You Learn in an Online Social Media Marketing Course?
There are plenty of great online courses out there for people who want to learn more and take control of marketing their business. It’s important to know how to use social media content to grow your followers and leverage the platform to your advantage.
You can learn:
- How to create and schedule posts on various platforms
- Creation of paid digital marketing campaigns
- Copywriting for ads, landing pages and sales pages
- Email follow-ups
- Integrations with other software platforms
- And so much more!
Even we at Big Domino Marketing regularly sign up for new online courses by industry experts to continue to expand our skills and expertise. In turn, we’ve created the Digital Marketing Academy to help people just like you get started with paid online marketing.
What most entrepreneurs do
In order to learn how to market your business properly, you might have searched for “social media marketing training courses near me” or “free social media marketing course online”.
You probably also spend a lot of time wondering if your audience is really out there, and what your strategy needs to be to create the results you’re looking for.
The number of times we get asked how social media and paid campaigns can help people is astonishing, but that’s why we can help you.
This is a great first step because it shows that you are determined to learn and grow.
However, you might have found that there are many online courses available to choose from. And this can be overwhelming when it comes to deciding which course is best for your needs.
Let’s break through the confusion and overwhelm once and for all.
How to choose the right social media marketing course
It may seem like a difficult decision when it comes to choosing the best marketing courses, but there are some things that can help narrow down your choices and prevent you from making an expensive mistake.
In order to make the right decision — one that will help you become a successful entrepreneur in today’s digital world, consider these factors:
- What exactly do you want to learn?
- What’s your budget?
- Consider your learning style: are you happy to do a self-paced online course or do you want to be taught “live” as in a group coaching program?
- How skilled are you when it comes to social media? Rate yourself in terms of creativity, ability to stay on-brand, copywriting, blog writing and technical skills.
- Do you want to receive an accredited certificate or are you looking to acquire skills quickly so you can immediately implement them?
- What type of person do you need to target with your marketing efforts? Is your business B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer)?
- How much time do you have each day/weekend allotted for learning?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll have a better understanding of what to look for when you’re reviewing online courses.
Where to start
If you’re an absolute beginner, you’ll need to find the best social media 101 course that teaches you the basics.
Once you’ve successfully learned the foundation, you can look into buying more advanced social media marketing online courses.
Look for courses that provide you with step-by-step guides, video tutorials, live training sessions (in a Facebook group or on Zoom) and more to help you master the skill of online marketing in a short amount of time.
What to look for in social media marketing programs
There are tons of people claiming to be online marketing geniuses. They swear they have found the holy grail of what works online and that your business will be lost without their strategies.
We don’t believe in selling people fear. We prefer to sell results.
This is because social media platforms are continually changing how their ads platforms work, the algorithm and a multitude of other factors that influence how you should be selling online.
This doesn’t mean that you and your business should give up, just be aware of the fact that what worked for someone else might not work well for you! Whatever course you choose needs to explain various options and not have a one-size-fits-all approach.
We share timeless marketing wisdom combined with tried-and-tested strategies to give our clients the best return on their investment.
The Big Domino Marketing Digital Training Academy is constantly evolving so that we’re always providing new information about what’s working NOW!
You’ll learn key strategies that we use with our clients who have been wildly successful by following proven methods-not guessing!
Next Steps to learn social media marketing
If you’re a business owner looking to grow your customer base using digital marketing, it’s important that you take the time to learn how a social media course can help.
The best way to upskill is to sign up for a social media course or courses that will teach you how to market with the budget you have now so you can get more leads, customers and sales.
We are here to help you create a social media and online plan that fits with your strategy and helps you reach your target audience.
Think of our Digital Marketing Academy as your social media marketing university. It’s designed for entrepreneurs and small businesses who want to know more about digital marketing like SEO, Google Ads, Facebook ads and Instagram marketing.
We’ll teach you step-by-step what you need to do so that you can easily and confidently manage the online marketing for your business.
Originally published at https://bigdomino.co.za on June 7, 2021.
