Building a business is incredibly difficult, and for many companies in their infancy, social media marketing is the most affordable and accessible form of marketing available.
On paper, it's a simple process: create a social media account for your business, start posting and let the followers and revenue flow in. But evidently, it’s a lot more complicated than that. You have to determine your brand identity, create a social media content strategy, build your reporting infrastructure and find your audience – to start.
One of the most common mistakes we see is people diving into the deep end with their endgame social media strategies without considering the perils and pitfalls that an account in its infancy will confront. When devising your strategy, you need to acknowledge that until you reach full maturity, you're playing a very different game and need to adopt a growth mindset. Here are a couple of tips to help you adapt your marketing strategy to your infancy stage.
Competing is costly.
No matter the industry you’re entering, chances are there are already established players vying for the same audience. Targeting broad and generic audiences is ultimately like whispering in the middle of Times Square while an ad for a much larger competitor is playing on a loudspeaker.
Instead, try finding your niche; be specific about who you want to communicate with. Avoid going for broad demographics like, ‘people aged 25- 50’. Speak directly to people who have already shown interest in products similar to yours.
Thanks to Facebook Custom Audiences, you can get quite specific about who you want to target, and it’s in your best interest to take advantage of this feature.
You don't have an audience yet, so pay for one.
When you're launching a brand from scratch, you likely won't have an audience larger than your extended friends and family, and maybe the clients you've already connected with. As such, every organic post is seen by this limited group of people.
Now, there are free ways to expand on this; opting for a radical hashtag strategy will increase the reach of your posts and ensure that it's landing in front of more people. However – as with most things in life – the paid option is more effective.
Try creating a simple "reach" campaign in Facebook Ads Manager. This is a cheap and effective way to increase the number of people that see your content. By using a custom audience, you can choose who you target based on their demographics and interests. A well-designed campaign can have an incredibly positive impact with a minimal budget of around $200 a month.
Agility is your advantage.
As a small business, flexibility and responsiveness are some of the primary advantages you have over large competitors, and that applies to your digital marketing as well.
Be vigilant with your accounts and engage with your audience. Rather than sticking to a set schedule, respond to comments and mentions, and post in line with relevant news and events.
By making customer service a core element of your social media, you are differentiating yourself from any other competitor who is posting robotically.
Strike with purpose
Marketing is a mapless experience, with many different avenues for you to take. This can be overwhelming for small businesses, so keep your focus on singular goals and objectives and make sure everything you do has the most significant possible impact.
Instead of trying to do everything at once, identify singular goals and solve them one at a time. What is your most significant blind spot? How can you generate the most revenue right now? By operating with purpose, you can ensure you don't waste money on ineffective half measures.
Plan → Measure → Learn → Optimise
The thing about growth strategies is that they are, by definition, temporary. You need to be regularly assessing the success of your campaigns and the status of your business, so your strategy never stagnates.
If a particular campaign doesn't work now, it may work tomorrow, and if one is working great today, it may hold you back in the future. Digital marketing is not something you can ever just ‘Set and Forget’, so it’s important to stay agile and continue adjusting as trends change and your business grows.
Need some more guidance on your social media marketing? Whether you’re pulling together your strategy or looking to build your online community, we’ll keep you in the loop with all the updates and tactics you need to be a better brand for your audience. Sign up to our newsletter for more tips and tidbits to help you thrive within your market.
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