Neil Patel Social Media Marketing & Advertising Guide
Neil Patel offers a distinctive perspective on social media marketing, emphasizing that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are more effective for building brand awareness than for driving direct sales. He believes that while selling products on these platforms is possible, users are typically not in a purchasing mindset when they engage with social media.
This doesn’t mean that social media can’t be leveraged for sales; rather, it’s about understanding the primary reasons people use these platforms. Patel and many other marketing experts note that users primarily turn to social media for entertainment, news, and staying connected with family and friends. They are more interested in consuming lighthearted content, such as humorous memes, captivating videos, and trending stories, rather than being bombarded with sales pitches.
Given this behavior, Patel strongly recommends that brands prioritize increasing their visibility and building a connection with their audience over pushing for immediate conversions. The key is to create content that resonates with the audience’s interests and keeps the brand top of mind, even if it doesn’t directly lead to a purchase.
Despite the challenges of direct selling, social media remains a powerful tool in the marketing arsenal. It is the fastest-growing trend globally and a significant source of online traffic. Brands can still strategically market to their target audience by aligning their social media efforts with users’ expectations and behaviors.
In this article, we’ll explore Neil Patel’s strategies for mastering social media marketing and advertising, exploring how to effectively engage with your audience and maximize the potential of these platforms.
The Ever Changing Landscape of Marketing and Advertising on Social Media
Although many marketers seem to have recently run away from the platform, Facebook is still the unmistakable king of social media. On the other hand, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are proving to be just as effective, which certainly depends on the niche in question.
With social media evolving so quickly, it’s important not to “put all your eggs in one basket.” At the same time, betting on the next big thing is often the most rewarding strategy. Many experts spread their marketing and advertising strategies across newer platforms in the hopes that one or more of them will eventually take off in the mainstream.
However, you simply cannot afford not to have a Twitter account or Facebook page. Patel is a big believer that every business should initially focus on mastering the basics and embracing the most popular channels.
What else should you know about the basics of social media?
What You Should Know about Content, Hashtags, and Interaction
Everything you share on social media, whether it’s a blog post, photo, video, or infographic, falls under the umbrella of ‘content.’ However, the effectiveness of this content often hinges more on the context in which it’s presented rather than the content itself.
Even the most well-crafted piece of content can fail to make an impact if it’s shared on the wrong platform or used inappropriately. For instance, a powerful insight buried within a lengthy blog post might go unnoticed. But when that same snippet is repurposed and shared on platforms like Instagram or Twitter, it can capture more attention and drive better engagement.
To maximize the visibility and relevance of your content, it’s essential to use hashtags that clearly define what you’re sharing on various social networks. Hashtags help users discover and engage with content that interests them, helping to connect your posts with the right audience.
Ultimately, the goal of sharing content on social media is to generate interaction—likes, comments, and shares are the true measure of success. This level of engagement is often more valuable than simply chasing clicks or broad reach because it signifies that your content is resonating with your audience and fostering meaningful connections.
Understanding Advertising on Social Media
Advertising on social media can be a game-changer when you strategically target the right audience. Platforms like Facebook allow advertisers to fine-tune their campaigns by selecting audiences based on a variety of factors, including demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. Similar targeting capabilities are available on other social media platforms, making reaching highly specific groups of potential customers possible.
Neil Patel is a strong proponent of social media advertising, often highlighting how these platforms have leveled the playing field for entrepreneurs and small businesses. In the past, reaching a large and relevant audience required significant resources and effort. Now, with the detailed insights and targeting options provided by social media, businesses can connect with potential customers more easily and effectively than ever before.
Whether your goal is to drive traffic to a product, increase website visits, or boost brand awareness, social media advertising can deliver quick and measurable results. These platforms’ immediacy allows advertisers to see the impact of their campaigns almost instantly—a powerful tool that should not be overlooked.
Here’s a closer look at some of the key advice Neil Patel offers for marketing and advertising on social media:
1. Create Relationships and Community on Social Media
Social media is all about the rate of interaction and conversation. Without genuine conversations with your audience, there is simply no way to create a relationship from which you can start marketing and advertising to a target market.
At the same time, it’s just as important that this conversation is mostly positive. Evoking positive feelings is the path to creating this relationship. For this reason, try to keep posts casual and light-hearted while meaningful enough for other people to share them.
If you have a high interaction rate on the page, this will nurture a sense of community on your social media account. This interaction will tell the social media network’s algorithms that people want to see your posts and increase the amount of reach your content receives.
2. Focus on Non-Product Related Posts and Creating Community
When considered, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can help guide marketing and advertising on social media. For instance, the third level of this theory outlines the importance of love and belonging.
Users will notice if you create a community and show them that you care.
Neil Patel says that brands should always focus on non-product-related posts and start building a catalog of useful content that users will connect with meaningfully.
Showing ‘behind the scenes’ content is a great way to create a connection with social media users. Video footage is very effective in this respect.
With this in mind, Patel has recently emphasized the importance of attaching a group to a Facebook page. As a rule, these groups have much greater reach. Beyond that, they are more powerful because they are designed to create a community in the first place.
3. Discover the Right Influencers for Marketing
Influencer marketing continues to be one of the most successful forms of marketing and this is certainly true on Instagram in particular. Brands that partner with influencers tend to have a wider reach and faster growth. To put this into perspective, recent studies show that more than 90% of online consumers are likelier to trust an individual over a brand. Needless to say, this is a basic requirement for making an actual sale.
However, you need to choose the right influencers and create a relationship before you can work alongside them. It’s important to properly research the influencer and ensure that they display values and traits that will complement the brand.
Moreover, social media tools will help you assess the level of interaction that these influencers receive. This will inevitably determine the success you will find through collaboration.
4. Using Live Video for Greater Reach and Interaction
For many people, live video can seem rather daunting, but statistics show that this form of media is one of the most powerful for marketing and advertising. Although this doesn’t come as a surprise, Patel says that video is always the best way to demonstrate transparency and authenticity.
While video is still the fastest and most convenient option for marketers, the uncertainty of live video appeals to users. Most social media users appreciate the fact that anything can happen on live video, and this is entertaining—especially when things go wrong.
Facebook and YouTube are currently the most popular places to livestream. However, similar capabilities can now be found on other platforms.
5. Use Instagram Stories (and Facebook Stories) Sooner Rather than Later
When Instagram began stealing users from Snapchat, the magic feature that they used was what we now know today as ‘stories’.
These days, you will find this feature on many social media platforms. Stories, whether GIFs, videos, or photos, are now among the best ways to market or advertise to users.
So, as you know, this is how most influencers earn a living. They offer to publish a story for brands in return for some temporary exposure to a certain audience.
However, brands can also use these stories to connect with an audience. This is certainly true at a time when Instagram, Facebook, and co are providing these stories with such a large reach.
Moral of the story: Social media is changing at a lightning pace. The ‘stories’ feature currently offers the best ROI in terms of producing content vs. reach.
6. Use Native Shopping Carts for Direct Sales
Social media platforms have recently enabled purchasing options and shopping carts. Known as “native carts”, these features enable users to buy products and services on social media in the space of a few seconds.
While Patel says that social media users are not in the buying mindset, he also advises businesses to make the most of whatever tools are available. In other words, social media can still provide a seamless shopping experience for users who might be ready to make a purchase.
For many users, this is also the fastest and most straightforward way to make a purchase. Moreover, many platforms have already integrated secure payment options and shopping carts, which are much more convenient than those on standard websites.
7. Post Content on the Right Social Media Channels
YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are very different in terms of how they should be used. What works on one platform does not always work on another, so it’s rarely a good idea to post the same content across various channels.
With this in mind, re-purposing content is a good idea. In fact, repurposing content is a good tactic to use as part of your content marketing strategy. This is simply an effort that involves tweaking a piece of content to better suit a different platform.
At the same time, Patel often warns that businesses lose customers by trying to move them between platforms. Let’s assume that you post regular content on YouTube. It’s not a good idea to continually direct users from other social networks to that channel. This is because the people who enjoy your content on Instagram appreciate content in a specific format. Moving them to YouTube might actually result in you losing their attention because they may not enjoy the kind of content that you post there.
Instead, Patel recommends that you recreate unique content for each channel. Avoid taking the ‘lazy’ route of leveraging audiences on other social media channels.
8. Use Paid Promotions and Paid Advertisements
You might have noticed how social media increasingly relies on paid advertising and promotions. It’s true that the likes of Facebook and Instagram now operate on a ‘pay-to-play’ basis, which means that organic content is no longer enough for most marketing or advertising strategies.
Even the savviest marketers are now resorting to paid promotions, and according to Neil Patel, this is likely to continue. In fact, as long as social media continues to promote advertisements, businesses will need to pay to get exposure for their content.
The statistics back this up: The average spend on social media advertising has more than doubled over the past five years. For this reason, over 80% of marketers use paid social media promotions. Even as little as US$10 daily is enough to make a big difference.
However, the fact that you’ve splurged money on social media networks does not mean that your posts will be effective. A lot goes into setting up your ads account, demographics, target keywords, and A/B testing, among other things. Therefore, it is possible that if you do not know what you are doing, you will spend a lot of money on social media platforms. If that’s not already bad enough, you will also gain very little in return for your brand and business.
How Pressfarm can help with your social media marketing
No one likes spending too much money and achieving very little. That is actually the definition of throwing money down the drain. Instead, you can involve experts who can help you save lots of money and run a profitable business on these social platforms. A good place to start is reaching out to our team at Pressfarm.
We are a PR agency that helps hundreds of startups and businesses with their PR strategies, both on social media and traditional media.
Do you need help boosting the online visibility of your brand? Backed by a team of PR specialists, expert writers, and certified designers, Pressfarm can help you do just that!
A professional press release, winning guest posts, and an eye-catching media kit can make a splash for your brand. Likewise, Pressfarm can help you put this content in front of the right eye.
By submitting your content to the right media outlets and startup directories, Pressfarm can ensure your brand ranks in relevant search results across different search engines. Additionally, with custom media lists from a media database of 1 million+ journalists, you can connect with skilled storytellers and share your brand story widely.
With one of Pressfarm’s affordable packages, you can generate the publicity your brand deserves.
Final Thoughts
It’s true, social media continues to change at a lightning pace but these platforms also continue to offer unrivaled exposure and opportunities. For marketers, these options are incredible tools and an efficient way to drive traffic to certain products or content, at the very least.
That being said, it’s important to understand what users want or need. Pay attention to context just as much as the content itself. Keep in mind that organic content is often useless without paid promotion. Regarding results, interaction and conversation are the holy grail of marketing and advertising on social media.
How Pressfarm can help
For an entrepreneur, how you manage your brand can determine your success or failure. At Pressfarm, we help companies define the right narrative in the media for their brand – either to improve their credibility or protect their brand image. If you are an entrepreneur wondering how to improve your company’s publicity, contact us. We can help you craft and distribute your press releases, develop compelling guest posts, and design eye-catching media kits for your brand.
Learn why we are good at what we do from our customer success stories.
