The primary causes of a company’s failure are poor marketing and being unable to compete with established players. Getting your marketing strategy right is crucial when launching a new business. Making your brand known to potential clients from the get-go is crucial if you want to succeed in the marketplace.
Improving brand recognition and acquiring new consumers are two of social media’s most important functions. This is an all-inclusive social media brand-building strategy document tailored specifically to new businesses.
So why is it important for new businesses to utilise social media?
As a startup, you may be searching for a place where people of diverse backgrounds may interact with one another. Social networking is where you can stop looking. It’s a great way to get your brand in front of a massive audience without spending a dime. That social media is seen as useful in marketing and the expansion of startups by 73% of marketers is not shocking.
Yet, you may be wondering why it’s important to worry about things like social networking.
Branding
Branding is the process of having your product or service known and recognised by its intended demographic. The potential for a firm to get traction and build its brand is enormous in the age of social media.
Initial responses
Entrepreneurs can only give the most beneficial version of their product to customers if they receive early feedback. Feedback may be efficiently collected using social media. In addition to promoting your product, you can also provide beta copies to your followers and gain their honest opinions. Their involvement, concerns, and behavioural tendencies might also be investigated.
Advancement and advertising
Offline advertising, television advertising, search engine advertising, search engine optimization, and other avenues are all available to new businesses. But, social media has several benefits that other methods lack. It can be easily tracked for cost efficiency, allows for pinpoint targeting, and increases participation. The majority of marketers (56%) believe that social media is the most effective medium for generating brand interaction, ahead of television (22%) and email (7%) respectively.
Deep connections with others
Startups in today’s world of many business possibilities must prioritise client connection from the outset. Through social media, you may build rapport with your target market by engaging with followers, responding to their inquiries, and providing specials and discounts.
How to use social media to expand your company’s customer base?
Following on from our discussion of why and where social media fits into the marketing funnel, let’s dive into some practical tips for using social media to grow your brand and your business.
The choice is yours: be whatever you want to be
Successful social media marketing begins with defining your brand’s personality and the impression you hope to leave with your target audience. Do you want people to see you as someone they can get to know on a personal level? Or are you more interested in establishing yourself as someone who others look up to for seriousness and sophistication?
Remember that your chosen persona will be reflected in your brand. It’s better to wait until later to swap personas, as doing so will only serve to confuse your audience and undermine your social media efforts.
Know who you’re talking to
Next, you’ll need to zero in on your ideal clientele in order to effectively reach them. To what sort of clients are you hoping to appeal? Are they in their twenties or thirties and working in major cities? Are they mothers who find themselves without a partner and who aspire to become entrepreneurs? Do they run a small business and want to boost sales and earnings?
Your social media material and efforts will be unfocused and uninteresting if you don’t define your audience.
Social media marketing may be more effective if you take the time to segment your audience by creating ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas.
Find the proper channels
Step two is deciding which social media platforms are most suited for your needs. As of the year 2021, 32 social media sites will have more than 100 million MAUs. As a result, it might be difficult to know which channels to prioritise and which to ignore.
To begin, expanding your online footprint without increasing quality content or engagement won’t help you succeed. For new businesses, the most they need is a few of reliable outlets. Based on the number of active users each month, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are the most popular platforms, making them good bets for startups. Pinterest, Snapchat, and LinkedIn may not be as widely used, but they, too, may be effective in reaching your target audience and accomplishing your goals.
Finding out where your ideal customers spend their time is a crucial first step in channel selection. Use Instagram if that’s where they spend most of their time. You may probably locate them on LinkedIn if they are active professionals. Please make use of LinkedIn in this scenario.
Build a plan for your social media material
In social media, content is what attracts and keeps your audience’s attention. Creating a content plan is the next step after deciding on the most suitable social media platform for your company’s needs. Producing content that helps your target demographic while also advancing your company’s aims is a necessary.
Social media content creation is a broad area that varies greatly depending on the specific network in question. In any case, here’s a brief rundown of the kinds of things you should share on your social network accounts.
Photos, movies, infographics, GIFs, etc. are all well received by social media users. Startups should pay special attention to videos and infographics among these visual content kinds.
Some examples of the kinds of videos you can make are:
- Educational Films
- Video guides and explanations
- Videos for a product
- videos of satisfied customers
- Videos showing how to do something