“Social Media is the only substitute for money but it costs time & knowledge”
First of all you’re going to have to define some personal goals and also strategize to think of your future and where you want to be in 2-3-5 or even 10 years and those are called “Business goals”.
It is worth your time to mind map out what your marketing objectives or goals are for the current and or present time, by doing research to assist with thinking of the “what,how,why you want to sell & promote via your business or what your business will be marketing. To market your business you don’t need to spend thousands on ads, content is king but context is god if you want to think of it that way. The content you put out should be various types because not everyone likes to read and not all customers will like to watch videos.
Examples: Build brand awareness.
- Grow market share.
- Launch new products or services.
- Target new customers.
- Enter new markets internationally or locally.
- Improve stakeholder relations.
- Enhance customer relationships.
- Increase Sales
No one has a business unless you know exactly where your ideal customers sits in the world and what exactly they like. You as a business owner/creator need to reverse engineer your potential future clients and find out what they don’t have in their life and what you can offer them so they can be a client for life. Without going through thoroughly of knowing who your ideal customer/client is your business is simply not going to flourish like it could and become a potential 6 figure business..Sad.. I know.
There is so much to know about your ideal client from demographics (who they are, gender, age, location, education, income.. etc). Preferences and habits: interests, hobbies, what type of blogs do they like to read, tv shows, travelling. Social habits (Does she use these social networks?) It will be key to find out what social networks they are on and how they use it because that is another avenue to help you target them specifically.
As a business owner most will know exactly who their competitions is and it is totally ok to be competitive because that is only going to fuel you more and more give you that drive to Hustle. This isn’t stating that you should copy them but be aware of what they are offering and what isn’t working for them and take it to the next level to make it work for you. Also another point is to reverse engineer their business and do the opposite and see what can work and make the biggest impact for you.
In business there are many different channels that you can float on and I don’t mean channels of water I mean different avenues for your business to become successful or fail. Same as in life you have to choose ways to build and grow your business and it may be through trial and error which everyone goes through unless you get lucky and hit it off from the start.
Channels & Tactics:
If you haven’t given any thought to how you’re going to market business then you might of already failed… Here are 8 channels to grow your business, first is referral marketing which can be done via word of mouth and can lead to a big ROI on it. Referrals can keep some business going or can give a huge boost to a business and eventually die off. Online publicity refers to gaining viewership via being featured in publications so try writing for bigger publications and or other types of media and see what the ROI of that is and what the analytics are from that. If you haven’t tried out using SEO for optimization you’re not getting ahead of the game, SEO firms up the fact that you can achieve top rankings for your own branded keywords. Researching target keywords that revolve around your business will tremendously help grow and build your brand’s public awareness organically.
Content Marketing:
Content marketing has been around for years but now it is even more important than ever. The bar has been set high for content creations, as society won’t consume the content if it isn’t decent enough for someone to waste their time to read it. Small companies have an advantage over larger companies because they can talk in first person, use this advantage in finding interesting content areas related to your business.
Newsletter:
Being in people’s inboxes is super important as people actually do read their emails but you have to have some strategies to it so your open and click through rates are around 100%. A well designed newsletter with info and images to grab people’s attention will do well versus a person just writing a few lines of words and or a long winded email which no ones wants to read especially if there is no title.
Paid Advertising:
Running ads on twitter, Facebook and the newest app that is running ads is instagram, I’m going to say that I highly recommend you running ads on Facebook first because you can set a budget and really get into targeting exactly who you want to see the ad. By running A/B testing you can see which one will prevail more for you in the end, but I advise to set a budget for your marketing campaign or you could end up spending a lot.
Social Media:
Use social media as ammo for presence and community building and use social media as leverage to push out different forms of content to your budding community. People like to interact with companies nowadays if they have problems with a product or service most will jump on social media and make it public. Use social media 80% of your time to promote your content and create 20% of the time and I’ll explain this tactic because most business people think the opposite and create tons of content or products and only push it out there like 20% of the time. The world won’t see it unless they are specifically looking for it, don’t be afraid to put your ideas and content out for the world to consume.
Content Strategy To Drive Organic Traffic:
Heard of Content is king and context is God… No well you just did! Yes paid ads are great and provide great reach but so does organic traffic gives it more of an authentic feel. Know your buyer persona’s and know exactly who your target market it and target them in every way possible.
Based on your buyer persona’s or your Ideal Client Profile think and figure out a list of keywords that will target that audience, create the content that the audience is looking for and in the end you’ll get the organic growth and traffic you deserve.
Now put to work the buyer personas & the keywords and think and create the content they are looking for and or consuming already. Instead of looking at the negative look at the positives of your self and gear the content towards what your market wants and also what you’re good at creating.
Ex. Blogging, visuals, email, audio, webinars, social media
Over time you’ll get into the feel and tone of how you go about creating content and your personality will show through so don’t force anything and let it come naturally your audience will thank you.
Use the FREE resources you have available to you already such as the internet as it is only really about 20 years old and I understand it has been around longer but I’m talking AOL, windows 95 era… Remember… Now my generation and younger are creating billion dollar companies and startups that are going viral.
Google will be your best friend and you can find free webinars, workshops, white papers, case studies and use them to help with your marketing strategy. If you have a budget then stick to it because some may not be able to shell out hundreds per month. If you have $50 extra a month I highly recommend putting it into Facebook ads and target exactly who you want to have buy your product or info or services. This is a way to hit the market from the get go but you can’t be selling shit, you have to offer more value than the price you’re selling it at. It is the way to build honesty, trust in your brand for long term success.
If you’re lucky enough to have a team of employees working for you and you know and trust them with your social media accounts then feel free to delegate tasks that aren’t big tasks and that you can give to them to work on. Decided what is to be done and set performance standards to your staff so it is clear to all what is expected. Next determine a schedule and deadlines so your business can continue to run smoothly and not hit any bumps due to staffing issues and miscommunication.
If you have new employee’s on board then delegate the smaller tasks to them until you trust them and have full confidence in them taking over social media campaigns which are bigger tasks. Give tasks to your employee’s and create discussions as exactly how you would like them to complete the tasks and Match the requirements of the job to the abilities of the person. Be sure that the person you delegate the task to is capable of doing the job.
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