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5 Steps to Know If Your Social Media Marketing Is Actually Working (and How to Improve It)

In this blog, I’m going to discuss the powerful ways to determine your content’s success and how you can leverage social media effectively.

We often find ourselves wondering:

The truth is, even big brands struggle to answer these questions. Especially if you’re a brand managing over 30 countries at a time and relying on importers and agencies, a good indicator is simply: “Oh, we sold ___ amounts of our units this time,” and that might feel like enough.

But when it comes to scaling up your brand the right way—and you don’t want to lose your ranks in competitive markets like Korea or Japan—fixing just 1–2 steps can be a game-changer.

Once we know better, we can compete better.

The Consumer Journey in Social Media Marketing

There are many steps we should consider, so I brought a diagram to help you understand how social media marketing truly works.

Step 1: Content Discovery

When people find your content on social media and believe the product you’re featuring is right for them, they’ll either:

Think of it as a “background check” when hiring someone.

Step 2: The Search Phase – The Key Questions Consumers Ask

At this stage, people are asking themselves, “Why should I buy now?”

WANT

NEED

I separate these into WANT vs. NEED because they are fundamentally different. People buy things either because they want to or need to. They drive completely different purchasing behaviors.

💡 Key insight:

If your content works exceptionally well, customers buy because they feel connected to your brand and want to be part of your journey. That’s the power of creating “WANT”!

Step 3: Trust Evaluation

If your brand is new, consumers will search for cues like:

For established brands, this journey is shorter, but for new customers, the search might be just as thorough as if you were a completely unknown name.