Days are gone when small businesses couldn’t justly compete against large companies in the market because they could not afford to advertise their products or effectively brand themselves mainly due to cost restrictions. Those were the days when advertising on TV and buying ad space in newspapers were the only effective marketing channels available. A lot has changed since then. Business owners learned to master and capitalize on social media marketing strategies.
Advertising no longer works as it used to. Nowadays, people get all their news online and conversations on the hottest topics take place in small online groups, website comment sections, and forums. Successful companies do not even need to compete for space on radios or TV, and social media has emerged as the most powerful marketing tool there is.
The potential of marketing through social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have become a significant, unstoppable force. For many in today’s world, the social media web is the preferred method of connecting, learning, communicating and discovering products and services. It’s the place where consumers go online to discuss their purchases, offer reviews, seek advice, and complain.
Here are some of the top reasons why you should adopt social media marketing:
- It increases brand recognition
- Improves brand loyalty
- More opportunities to convert a new audience into customers
- Higher conversion rates
- Lower marketing cost
- Richer customer experiences
In today’s business world, large companies, and even small businesses, have learned and some even mastered how to use social media as a vehicle to market their business. But not all are successful with it. Why is that? The main issue with social marketing is that the small business owners have begun to jump through the entire process without paying much attention to the hierarchy. They failed to fully understand that the social media platforms has its own hierarchy.
To be able to launch a successful social media marketing campaign, these step by step strategies need to be followed.
Step 1 – Identify and Create the Keyword Strategy
When you have customers looking for something, you want them to reach your website or your advertisement using a single word. That is what a keyword does. There are many consumers all over the world who are looking for businesses on search engines. They take a lot of pain to search for these businesses and they use keywords to do it.
You, as a business owner, can use this to your advantage. You’ll need to ensure that your website revolves around the keywords that are in line with the type of business you’re in and the words that your potential consumers may use. This will help you since the chances of the potential consumers finding you will increase through the use of those keywords. This will ensure that your business flourishes.
Step 2 – Optimize Your Website
You’ve made the list of keywords that you need to use for your business. Now, to ensure that you increase the ranking of those keywords, thus increasing the chance of attracting people towards your website, Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the answer!
You need to design your website for the visitors or your potential customers instead of the search engines that they are on if you want to be viewed by your consumers. To do this, you need to aim at being at the top of the first page, or somewhere in the first page, if possible. If not, you need to aim at being in the first few pages, say the first five, on the search. You need to keep this in mind in order to do well in the market.
Step 3 – Create a Blog or other type of content
There are many platforms that can be used to make it easy for a person to publish content on the internet. Blogging or posting content in different forms will ensure that more customers view your website.
Step 4 – Promoting Content and Participation in different Social Media
Social media has now become a great platform to set businesses’ up. A lot of marketers and businessmen now use social media to establish and run their businesses. Marketers who are able to use leverage social media are able to distribute the products and services provided by their company with ease. They’re able to increase their customer base to help their company grow significantly.
There are many new forms of social media that are being introduced to the internet. However, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube are still the most used and patronized by the people. As a business owner, you should take the time to learn about how to market on these platforms.
Step 5 – Convert the Site Traffic into Leads for your Business
You need to focus on the rate of conversion and capitalize on the increased traffic in your website. Work on converting the people viewing your content into the people who are selling your business. One way of doing that is to create compelling orders. Give your visitors an offer that they can’t refuse. This is because the offer is the initial attraction to your website. Ensure that the offer you make will target the sales that you intend on making.
Step 6 – Use Leads in your Emails when Marketing
There are many surveys that have been conducted on online marketing. The results are that, close to 70% of your leads buy something from you. So, the companies that build a good relationship with their leads are the ones that have a great success rate in turning their leads into potential buyers and customers.
Do not fail to keep track of all your customers and keep in touch with them. You can do this by sending emails and messages to help them know what offer out there is the best for them. Work on nurturing the leads that you obtain.
Step 7 – Ensure that you are Mobile Friendly
These days, you will find every person, young or old, flaunting a new mobile phone that they have purchased. Capitalize on this as a means for marketing. Be willing to market on the internet that’s used on mobile phones and consider the idea of creating a quality content through entertainment. You need to come up with innovative ideas to get people to view your advertisements on their mobile phones.
Step 8 – Analysis and Refinement of Strategies
This is a very important step that every marketer must employ. Ensure that you are able to provide your customers with the best service. This can only be done if you learn and master how to use the social media as a marketing tool, since it allows you to connect with the consumers on a large scale and create advertisements that cater to the different segments of the society.
To achieve success, it will take constant learning and application of social media marketing strategies, embracing emerging marketing technologies and investing a lot of time and money in getting maximum exposure for your business. It is time to kick start your social media marketing efforts and grow your business significantly. All the best in your social media marketing!
Jack is a self-made entrepreneur, who actually started out in the Military, then worked for the Government for a few years, until he finally made that bold step and started out his own online and offline businesses. He’s never looked back ever since, and hasn’t been happier…
