Steps to create an efficient social media strategy to grow your business

The days of relying on door-to-door marketing are gone. Even making face-to-face pitches to customers and meeting prospective clients during corporate events are over. A great marketing strategy post-COVID-19 should include all relevant digital marketing channels for their business.

Since social media marketing is one of the most effective forms of digital marketing, growing numbers of businesses are investing in it in the hope that it generates a positive result for them.

According to a recent survey, more than 50% of the world’s population is a user of one or other form of social media (Statista). Users across all demographic profiles and behavioural patterns are not only using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram but actively exploring different products and services using this platform. These immensely popular platforms help you to promote your products and turn your visitors into clients

An effective social media strategy would enable you to achieve your business target via traffic on your websites and social media networks.

Importance of social media for your business

As one of the most commonly used ways of promotion in the world today, social media helps to raise awareness about your brand, connect with clients and turn desires into inquiries. So as a business owner if you are not using social media for your business you are missing out on an important tool for your business. A recent survey revealed that 54% of users use social media to research the product. (GlobalWebIndex) 

A detailed social media marketing strategy is the need of the hour

Social media is increasingly becoming popular among all kinds of people irrespective of their profile. As a result, the majority of companies are focusing on social media for the marketing of their products and services. However, the bigger question is how to make a strong presence on social media and reach out to the targeted audience.

A consistent, detailed, and comprehensive marketing strategy helps you to achieve success in social media. You also need to coordinate your execution to effectively reach your followers and accomplish your marketing goals.

How to grow your business using social media marketing in 8 easy steps 

A strong social media presence can influence your business in many ways. Here you will find out the strategy which will bring out sure shot success for your business. We have compiled 8 easy steps to create a social media strategy for the rapid growth of any organization. 

 1. Learning about the target audience and understanding the trend of the market

The initial measure to creating an efficient social media strategy starts with the understanding of the targeted audience. Collect actual data about the customers to understand their buying patterns and requirements of your customers.

You also need to understand the detailed demographic profile of the potential customer like age, profession, location, and interests to form the right communication strategy. The detailed profiling also helps you to do the proper targeting while running paid promotions.

Once you define your potential customers and requirements, the next step is to find out their favourite social media platforms and how they are using them, and how much time they are spending on each of them. This allows you to create the correct communication with the right message and format. You also need to keep track of your customers’ preferred mode of communication and their preferred language for communication.

As a part of the strategy, you also need to conduct an analysis of competitors to find out their social media activities.

 2. Setting up social media marketing goals

Setting up a goal is a very important and critical aspect of your social media marketing strategy. Use the S.M.A.R.T framework to define your goal. In an ideal scenario, you should break down the goals in the following way:

• Specific-You should specify the exact thing you want to achieve out of social media marketing. For example, you want to improve the follower base for your Facebook page
• Measurable-The change has to be measurable. For example, you want to increase the follower base by 5000 in the next 2 months.
• Attainable-The goal you define should be realistic and attainable. Suppose you want to improve the follower base by 100000 in the next 15 days is not realistic
• Relevant– Your goal should be relevant to the business. Suppose you want to have more followers for your page then all other activities should be aligned to it.
• Time-bound-The social media marketing goal has to be time-bound. So in case you want to increase the follower base you should define the time frame within which you want to improve the count. 

You need to define social media marketing objectives and coincide them with the above goals. Create time-bound and attainable objectives so that they can add to your efforts and helps you achieve overall goals. 

For example, at the initial stage of the product life cycle, your focus is to build the brand presence. All your efforts and initiatives should add to this objective. A defined objective will help you to measure the effectiveness of your campaign using social media metrics.

 3. Allocation of budget and resources for the campaign

Once you identify your objectives, you need to list them down based on your priority. Based on your particular objective, you need to allocate the right resource and budget. Remember, whether you have a business with a local presence or a big brand, you need to define a well-thought-out budget for your social media efforts.  Your budget should be realistic and aligned with the defined objective.

For example, in case you want to promote a seasonal offer for a limited number of days you need to keep your daily budget high. Whereas, in case you want a consistent brand presence you need to distribute budgets over a period of time.

 4. Tracking the result of your social media marketing campaigns

Measurement of the results against the defined objective is one of the most critical aspects of social media marketing strategy. Remember your efforts should be driven by the data analysis as it will help to measure the progress of your efforts.

Is the number of likes enough for your brand promotion? Are you getting the desired number of leads out of your Facebook promotion? You can answer all such questions once you start measuring your achievement against the target. 

For example, in case your objective is to generate leads out of social media then an analysis of the number of inquiry forms filled up will give you an idea about the performance of your campaign.

Remember each platform has got its own set of metrics for the measurement of results. For example, on Instagram, the number of likes on each post or the number of views on the stories will give you an idea about the popularity of your brand.

 5. Creating engrossing content and publishing on the right platform

The next step is to create engrossing content for your social media channels. Create content matching with your current objective. For example, in case your audience is keener to watch videos you should create content based on videos.

Remember different channels require different types of content based on their user base. A single type may not be ideal for all types of channels. You need to adapt the content suiting to the requirement of the platform.

It is also advisable to create a content calendar on a monthly basis with the date of posting and the type of content to be posted. You need to create highly useful and engrossing content to be successful on highly competitive social media platforms.

 6. Identification of the right tool for social media marketing

Identification of the right tool is the key to success for social media marketing. The right tool will help to improve your performance as well as the effectiveness of your campaign. 

The right tool will help you automate your posting, scheduling them as well as the measurement of their effectiveness. You should choose a social media marketing tool that is having all of the above-mentioned features at the optimum cost.

Find out some popular and effective social media marketing tools.

 7. Evaluation and adaptation of the strategy

Because of the vastness of social media and huge competition your initial effort may not always bring the best results. This is where the evaluation and adaptation of the strategy are needed.

A social media data analysis will help you to understand which posts are producing the desired results and which are not producing any results. You can also try out different layouts and text contents to understand the effectiveness of each of them. Continuous tracking will help you to understand the weak points and rectify the shortcomings. You also need to adapt your strategy based on the performance of the posts. You should always try to create content which is matching with the expectations of your audience.

 8. Trying out something new

The last and the most unique part of social media marketing is to experiment with your marketing strategy. Start with an initial budget to make such experiments. Try to experiment with the platforms and contents which others are not doing. As each kind of social media platform is having unique exposure you might see surprising results from untested platforms.

For example, for personal branding, you could run a paid campaign on LinkedIn. With social media, you just need a unique idea to reach out to the right customers. Even try to reach out to customers whom you have not targeted at the initial stage. You might hit a jackpot by exploring the most underutilized audience.

Hire a trusted a social media marketing agency

By now you must have a better understanding of how to use social media to grow your business. Remember, there is a great deal of research, study, innovation, and experiments involved in a social media marketing campaign. But you need to be focused and consistent on different channels to get the results.

Just make sure to use the right content for each platform to increase business and gain an extra advantage against your competitors. It is also advisable to be associated with a trusted digital marketing agency like Purple Tuche to carry out your social media marketing activities.

Purple Tuche enables you to meet the challenge of the ever-growing virtual sphere and helps to develop your position on the global market through unique social media branding and promotional strategies.

Purple Tuche also offers the right expertise in recommending appropriate platforms for businesses and in developing customized social media solutions for daily challenges.

So what are you waiting for? It is your turn to use social media marketing to grow your business and make it a success.