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By Lisa Anthony

Social media marketing can be cost-effective when you pick platforms suited to your business and consistently deliver messages that engage your target audience.

Social media marketing, a type of digital marketing, uses social media platforms to deliver online content to a business’s target audiences. Content is generally designed to build brand awareness and promote products or services, but it can also help a business increase visitors to its website and gather information about followers that can be used in email marketing and other campaigns.

Social media marketing allows you to engage in a more direct way with your target audience, even in one-on-one conversations in some instances. It can be less expensive than other forms of marketing, but it’s also highly competitive due to continuous streams of social posts vying for the attention of consumers. Creating an intentional social media marketing strategy can help you maximize your efforts and improve your return on investment.

How to create a social media marketing strategy

Social media marketing works like other forms of marketing as far as defining goals, identifying a target audience and creating content. However, to keep an active social media presence, a business will need to post regularly on their platforms of choice and regularly monitor brand mentions and customer comments.

Determine your social media marketing goals

Plotting out your goals from the outset will help guide you in the other decisions you’ll need to make, such as which social media platforms to use and the type of content to post.

Here are some general goals that are common to social media marketing:

  • Increase brand awareness.

  • Gain customer insights.

  • Increase sales.

  • Develop leads.

  • Increase website traffic.

  • Respond to customer complaints.

  • Retarget visitors to your website who don’t make purchases.

  • Get followers to share your content on promotional events.

  • Draw attention to a charity or non-profit organization you support.

When possible, be specific when setting goals, but also keep in mind that the success of some of your efforts may be hard to document. For example, it can be more difficult to measure an increase in brand awareness, but the goal of higher website traffic can be documented through marketing tools such as Google Analytics.

Define your target audience

Knowing your customers is important to any marketing effort. Customer information, such as interests, buying behaviours, pain points and demographic details like age, gender and annual income, can help you create content that will interest your target audience.

Also, demographic details may influence your choice of social media platforms. For example, if your target audience is primarily women, you may want to market on a platform that has a higher percentage of women than men. Or, if your target audience is younger, you may want to use a platform that is popular with that age group.

However, with daily users numbering in the millions on many popular platforms, your target audience may be well represented on any platform. Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram are a few of the platforms that offer audience insights tools you can use to learn about the people using the platform. Talking directly to your customers about which platforms they frequent most can also help inform your social media strategy.

Pick your social media platforms

You may choose to target even more niche social platforms based on your type of business and customers, but here are some of the most popular and how they’re used:

  • Facebook: Text, image and video sharing. A Facebook business page can provide important information about your business and build community.

  • YouTube: Video sharing.

  • Twitter: This social networking platform is mostly used for text-based Tweets, but you can also incorporate images, videos and GIFs.

  • Instagram: Photo and video sharing.

  • TikTok: Video sharing. Compared to YouTube, this is best for shorter videos.

  • Pinterest: Image sharing.

  • LinkedIn: A professional networking platform, LinkedIn is primarily used to market to businesses rather than consumers, or to increase brand awareness by participating in industry-specific forums.

  • Snapchat. Instant messaging, image and video platform.

  • Reddit: Forum-style discussions.

Assess your content needs

The type of content you’ll post on social media will depend on your business, goals and which platforms you’re using. It can range from promotional to educational and should reflect the human characteristics and voice that best define your brand, or your brand personality. For example, if your business sells outdoor gear, your brand personality might be rugged and adventurous. Or, if your business sells products and services for small children, your brand personality might be playful but nurturing.

Social media content can include text, images and videos. You may also be able to link to other content you’ve created such as articles, blogs, e-books and videos. Depending on the platform, there may be limits to what can be included in posts. For example, on Twitter, a Tweet can contain up to 280 characters plus up to four images, videos and/or GIFs.

Your social media marketing efforts might also include the use of digital ads on multiple social media platforms and search engines such as Google and Bing. Each platform will have its own requirements for ads and typically offer content recommendations. For example, YouTube offers step-by-step instructions on creating video ads, with pre-made templates and other tools.

Post consistently

Posting consistently is an important factor in successfully promoting your business on social media. Each business’s posting cadence, whether it’s daily, a few times a week or weekly, will depend on its goals and audience. You’ll also want to factor in the time it takes to produce quality content — a video or high-quality photos may take longer than a text-only Tweet, for instance.

Creating a posting schedule can help your business post consistently — and marketing software can help automate the process. While you can post the same content on all your platforms, it’s better to customize the content for the audience of each individual platform. Plus, as discussed, each platform has unique requirements for postings.

Posting regularly can help a business to:

  • Increase brand authority, credibility and reputation.

  • Build followers.

  • Gain familiarity with the platforms and tools.

  • Establish its brand voice.

  • Improve content rankings on platform feeds.

  • Support paid advertising efforts.

Monitor mentions and respond quickly

It’s important to monitor the mentions of your brand and comments made on your posts. Customers frequently take to a business’s social media when they have customer service questions or complaints. In those instances, responding quickly and positively is key, but aim to resolve the issue privately, by encouraging them to direct message or email your business.

Monitoring mentions — and encouraging customers to post about your business (while tagging your account) — can also help you identify brand advocates and gather user-generated content to repost, which can ease the burden of content creation.

It may take months before you see noticeable progress toward your marketing goals, but social media management tools like Hootsuite, Zoho Social and Buffer can help you monitor your content as well as help with posting, scheduling and measuring results.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Lisa Anthony

Lead Writer  |  Personal finance, lending, personal taxes

Lisa A. Anthony is a writer on NerdWallet’s small-business team, primarily covering payroll software and payment processing. She has over 20 years of diverse experience in finance, lending and personal taxes. Prior to becoming a writer, Lisa worked as a loan officer, business analyst and freelance marketing consultant. Over the years she has had the opportunity to interact directly with consumers to conduct product research, gather insights and evaluate user experiences. She is based in San Diego.

Sourced from nerdwallet

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Many businesses have to squeeze out expenses to break-even and start making a profit. Unfortunately, some important processes, such as marketing, go underfunded.

However, that doesn’t have to be the case. There are several ingenious low-cost strategies to promote your business while you’re on a tight budget. You just need to start small and you’ll be able to scale up as you go.

Here are seven cost-effective strategies that will attract customers to your business. Your main goal should be to scale up the process so that you get more revenue by applying all these techniques consistently. The cycle will spiral upwards, later on, bringing you more clients each time.

1. Create engaging online content

Time; that’s the only thing you’ll need to start producing excellent content. Running a blog is quite easy nowadays. There are many templates available and you don’t have to worry about hosting. Many blog hosts offer free hosting without premium features. Zero capital for starters, that only requires effort. If you decide to improve things down the line, you can hire remote employees.

You need one or two outstanding writers. Plus, an editor and a graphic designer would also be useful additions. The good news is that most of them work as freelancers, meaning, you get to pay for services only when you need them.

Always make sure the content aligns with your product or service. Research extensively and give customers what you’d consider reading yourself. Some ways to keep content engaging is through:

  • Sharing useful tips across articles
  • Adding an FAQ section with detailed answers
  • Incorporating lists, graphic assets, and multimedia
  • Listing best practices in your industry
  • Highlighting key points and crucial ideas

Now, regarding your potential earnings, the following chart shows the average revenue possible for ~60% of the population who is willing to publish 3 pieces of valuable content a week, as you can see the profits are considerable:

shoestring-budget-own-elaboration-based-on-data-by-financial-samurai

Image Source: Financial Samurai

2. Do cold calling

There are many agencies and marketplaces that offer professional cold calling services. You brief them on what you are offering, pay a fee, and they’ll do the magic. If you cannot afford such services, you can do this in-house.

All you need is to research the best cold calling practices. Then, prepare scripts to ensure consistency in your message. Stay courteous on the phone, explain things patiently, and you will start seeing your first leads. Just keep in mind that cold-calling is a number’s game.

You can also consider incorporating cold emailing. It works the same way as cold calling only that you do not get instant feedback. Send out emails to prospects, then wait a few days to send follow-ups when there’s no reply. There are many options to automate this process, which will save you a good amount of time.

3. Leverage referrals

One of the oldest ways of promotion is through word of mouth. Encourage your satisfied customers to spread the word. After all, any product is best understood by those that use it.

Referral programs are quite flexible so you can be very creative with them. Giving rewards is the best way to do it. Here are some ways of using rewards in your customer referral programs:

  • Have giveaways for customers with the most number of referrals.
  • Give customers and those whom they refer, a percentage discount.
  • Give some free products/services to customers with a certain number of referrals.
  • Make a scoring system with hierarchies to make customers gain points and upgrade their status, unlocking additional benefits.

4. Apply for awards

There are many companies that offer online awards to businesses of different niches. Find one related to your industry. Showing that you have awards boosts trust ratings among your potential customers.

Some awards are easier to get, whereas some have very rigorous criteria. Getting those harder awards will definitely grant you trustworthiness, and customers recognize that. This increases your business reputation.

If awarded, the organizations share your business information on their site and social media platforms. That drives more traffic to your business. Thus, bringing prospects your way.

If you are granted an award, here are some things worth doing to take full advantage:

  • Share the announcement on your website and social media
  • Prepare a well-written press release
  • Write a blog post expressing your gratitude for the award by outlining what it means to your business
  • If the award comes with a badge, place it strategically on your site

5. Strengthen your business through partnerships

When people come together costs are easier to bear. Team up with other local businesses and do joint campaigns. It applies to businesses relevant to your industry.

Don’t go about it blindly though, you need businesses that complement yours. For example a wedding photographer can team up with a wedding planner and a wedding dress designer.

Such partnerships will widen your customer database. Your partners’ customers trust them, so your information shared on their platforms gets easily trusted too.

6. Stay active on social media

Let’s take a look at some amazing stats shared by Oberlo to give you an idea of how massively important social media (SM) is for businesses:

shoestring-budget-oberlo-social-media-users-data

As you can see, social media is probably the biggest marketplace in the world right now, and it is no longer just about replying to messages and posting content. People want to establish meaningful relationships. Therefore, you need to take the time to know your customers, get them to know your business and cultivate a loyal customer base. This requires you to stay constantly active.

Understand your followers and people who interact with your content. Engage with them often and listen to the feedback given. Act on such feedback and show that you care about your customers and value their opinions.

In order to improve engagement consider introducing fun activities. Social media contests are an outstanding example. They keep your customers engaged, they’re fun, and some customers get to take cool prizes back home.

This is an easy low-cost strategy that will help you build your online reputation, which is more important. With time, word will spread, and soon you’ll have your website visits exploding. The conversion rate also skyrockets as long as you take the time to cultivate relationships.

7. Get involved in your local community

While staying active online brings customers from all corners of the globe, your local community is equally important. They probably formed your initial customer base and might be your most loyal customers.

It’s important that you keep them engaged as well. Take part in local fairs and events. It keeps your business fresh in their memory and provides you a platform to introduce fresh developments.

Carry some business cards and posters when you attend local events. Also, don’t simply dish them out. Make meaningful conversations with prospects as you would with online followers. Only this time you are doing it in person, so facial expressions and other non-verbal cues matter.

Conclusion

Most of what is listed above requires exclusively effort or very low investment. Experiment with each strategy and you will soon realize that you don’t need a super large budget to promote your business.

It’s often through simple interactions that you create long-lasting impressions. Add a little creativity into the process and you will never run short of a constant customer flow. By the time you decide to scale up, you will have gained not only some stability but also a great deal of experience.

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Guest author: Bryan Osorio is a Blogger, SEO enthusiast, Content Marketer, and Digital Marketer with 3 years of experience within the Tech and Digital Marketing Industry. He likes to read, write and talk about Science, Technology, AI, Video Games, World News, and more. He studied Psychology at the National University of Colombia and enjoys writing about leadership, remote work, team motivation and others.

Sourced from Jeff Bullas