The 5 P's of Social Media Marketing You Cannot Afford to Ignore

Every organization needs a good bartender – someone to experiment with available ingredients until both company and customer are satisfied. That person is your marketing manager.

Fortunately, there’s a formula for putting the right product in the right place, at the right price and the right time. It’s called the Marketing Mix, and industry leaders have been perfecting it since the 1940s.

In recent years, of course, experts have adapted the original recipe to form the 5 Ps of Social Media Marketing.  These five essentials are a great guide to ensuring your brand’s strategy is on the right track, too.

1. Plan

    Nearly every company is pursuing content and social media marketing in some form. But although it is clear people want useful content and authentic engagement, many brands still struggle to create an effective program.

    Park of the problem is misunderstanding what strategy means. As Nicholas Cole writes in Inc.com: “Newsletters are not a strategy. Posting on social media is not a strategy. Running Facebook ads is not a strategy. Those are tactics. A strategy is a larger idea. It’s a movement, a feeling, a mantra, a mission. It’s what you stand for. It’s your message, your unique expression. That’s what ends up attracting a crowd – and interested clients or consumers. Not the act of you posting regularly on Instagram.”

    Effective plans are driven by the “why” behind a brand’s existence. Only then can creative teams expect to successfully develop and manage the “how” of outreach.

    Once that larger picture is nailed down, go ahead and map out a plan for what you’d like to achieve. Specific goals might center on brand awareness, lead generation, customer conversion, and retention. Whatever they are, they absolutely need to be measurable. That way, you’ll know if the next steps are working or if something needs to change.

    2. Produce

      According to Forrester, the average person consumes 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchase decision. We know what you’re thinking. That’s a lot. But don’t worry. Producing influential content doesn’t have to be an expensive or exhausting task.

      In fact, you may be better off not creating your own material – instead repurposing existing fan content. As BlitzMetrics Chief Technology Officer Dennis Yu reminds us, “What others say about you is way more credible than what you have to say about yourself.”  And with billions of social media users sharing their thoughts online, the orchard is ripe for picking.

      With social media aggregation engines, marketers can easily locate relevant UGC, scanning networks for desired hashtags or feeds and then routing that content into customized dashboards. Compiled together, that UGC library provide brands with an incredible opportunity to show prospective customers how products look in the context of real life.

      3. Publish

        Now that content is ready, it’s time to decide where it will live.

        Considering what researchers at Statista recently discovered -- that simply featuring user photos and customer reviews on brand websites increases shopper confidence by 73 percent – featuring social content along every step of the purchase path is one of the smartest things a marketing team can do.

        Because UGC feels organic and helps customers connect with the brand and each other, consumer-minded brands are finding huge success in transferring social media content to streaming hubs on websites, apps, and live event displays. (Rules and filters can be assigned to route specific content to designated areas – for example, academic institutions may want to publish alumni posts on one hub and official college content on another – and moderation tools protect the integrity of the brand.)

        Ultimately, social hubs work because they put the spotlight on the people who know and love your brand best. Publishing content this way sends a powerful message: people just like you embrace this brand and you should, too.

        4. Promote

          A powerful promotion strategy gives content legs. It’s not as simple as slapping an ad on a newsfeed, though. Creative teams see greater results when blending fun ideas with tactical brainstorming. For example:

          Since the path to purchase is rarely a straight shot, it’s a good idea to incorporate more than one technique. Research indicates 90% of tech users switch between an average of three devices a day to complete a task – and that doesn’t count attention spent on offline resources like print media, outbound ads, and storefronts. These busy consumers crave seamless engagement and consistent messaging.

          Plus, since maintaining steady engagement builds credibility with followers, it’s important to take the time to understand how your target audience prefers to communicate and promote accordingly.

          5. Prove

            To know how efforts are impacting the brand, marketers need to look at KPIs on a regular basis. That’s because counting likes and follows simply isn’t enough to gauge success. Metrics like post popularity, follower demographics, engagement rates, time spent, page views, and reach can help guide future efforts, though.

            Only with actionable insights like these can you determine which content resonates with your audience and ensure your organization’s campaigns are getting the best results possible.

            To better understand the 5 Ps in the context of social media marketing, take a look at this helpful infographic put out by the team at Branex.


            Through the widespread use of social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter, modern marketers are now able to reach consumers around the globe in moments. Thousands of brands are building trust and telling brand stories with curated social media. You can, too, with a free trial of TwineSocial’s aggregation and display engine today.

            For more ideas on how to promote shared enthusiasm around an idea, product, or community, check out our solutions gallery. Then, kick off your own success story with a free 7-day trial of TwineSocial. Let us know how we can help!

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