In this digital world, starting a business is not a big deal now as tech has helped lower the entry barrier. Now, with the right strategy and idea, anyone can start a business regardless of age, educational background, and type of product.
However, even with the low entry barrier, only a few percent of startups end up sustaining the tough competition in the real world. A study by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that only 55% of businesses get to witness their 5th birthday. This means that nearly half of the businesses die before completing half a decade.
So, what is the culprit?
Most experts believe that around 30-40% of businesses fail due to poor marketing. From old marketing practices to choosing the wrong platforms, and not spending enough money on awareness campaigns, the reasons are endless.
If you are a startup owner struggling with your marketing campaign, here is everything to know.
Start With a Competitive Research
This is the first, yet very crucial step for a business owner planning a social media strategy. With the help of this, the marketer will be able to understand the common trends within their niche, how other brands are using different platforms for marketing, and some of the best campaigns.
For competitive research, it is better to invest in a good internet connection that can make the research process seamless.
For small businesses and startups, Cox Internet is a perfect pick, since they offer plans with speeds up to 2 Gbps without the need to sign any contracts. You can easily browse through the Cox Internet Packages and pick the one that suits your needs and budget.
To make sure this step works smoothly, do not just stick to one medium. Check out video marketing, paid marketing, and how different brands in your niche approach their marketing efforts. While filtering out this information, make an Excel sheet or a document where you can list all these details, so you can use it later.
By the end of this research, you need to have information about your primary and secondary audience, the popular content type within your niche, the biggest competition, and popular trends within your industry.
Build a Marketing Funnel
Now that you have the competitive research ready, it is time to know where your business stands in the marketing funnel. It is more complex than most people think. Essentially, you have five main stages: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, and Advocacy.
Considering these five stages, the marketer needs to figure out where their client stands in the funnel. For instance, if the brand is new with little to no audience, the brand is in the Awareness phase. This means no one is familiar with the product, so people are more likely to try it if they know about it. However, due to a lack of awareness, not a lot of customers are buying from the brand.
Sometimes, brands have good products and a decent customer lineup. However, most customers never make a repeated purchase. This means that the brand fails at the loyalty stage. To make sure the customer feels connected and keeps coming back, it is ideal to market the incentive or loyalty program.
Understand Your Audience
Understanding the audience is very important while strategizing the marketing plan. While most markets focus on the content and trending topics, they forget the value of the audience. For instance, brands with younger audiences have to change language, content, media, and platforms based on the audience’s age.
A brand targeting Gen Z needs to work with video marketing, focusing on bright colors and informal language. This will help them to connect with Gen Z and make their product more popular among younger audiences. On the contrary, brands with boomers as their primary audience need to look for old-school marketing strategies.
Plan a Calendar
Now that you have all the details ready, it is time to plan your calendar. Your calendar needs to have details like date, time, day, important events, frequency of post, content within the post, and the platform where the post will be scheduled.
The goal of this calendar is to help everyone stay informed about the content to be posted. Moreover, preparing a calendar will help you avoid the hassle of thinking of a new and creative idea every day. In case you find it hard to create your calendar, you can easily find a template online. Some platforms also offer built-in calendars on their site so the marketer only needs one dashboard to do everything.
Automate Everything
Finally, you have the calendar ready according to your brand so it is time to start posting. While most brands hire dedicated resources or a team for posting content, small brands with limited budgets might struggle. This is where you can rely on social media dashboards.
While choosing a social media dashboard, focus on the basic features. For instance, a good social media management tool needs to have a basic calendar template, a third-party social media integration feature, along with content scheduling.
Best Social Media Management Tools
Here are a few tools to help you execute your social media strategy for your brand:
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- Sprout Social
- Later
- Hubspot
While all these social media management tools are ideal, some of them do not come with a free trial. If you are on a budget, make sure to look for a platform that requires no payment for a basic plan, or at least has a free trial.
