How to set SMART Social Media Goals
Having Smart social media goals simply means you know what you want to achieve with social media and not just jumping into any social media networks without thinking of what you want to achieve there.
There are different types of business goals that you can use for social media marketing, for example, you might want to drive more traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, generate leads and sales or run an awareness campaign. We will help you in setting smart social media goals so that you can succeed in social media marketing.
What makes a Goal SMART?
For you to actualize your goals they need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-specific this make SMART goals.
Specific
Give a clear description of what you want to achieve. For example, you decide that your goal is to get more Instagram followers. Specific goals are more achievable than vague goals.
Measurable
Create a target that will indicate your success. You can set that you want to get 10,000 Instagram followers.
Attainable
Can you be able to achieve your goal? From the number of followers you currently have can you be able to get to 10,000 Instagram followers.
Realistic
Your goal should be aligned closely to your business objectives such as your vision and mission. Your goals must be achievable.
Time-specific
Set a time frame by which you should have achieved your goals. You can set that you should get 10,000 Instagram followers in three months.
After doing this now put the necessary time and effort needed to achieve the goal. As you progress be checking the progress to know if you are on the right track or not.
How to get social media success in Kenya
Set your social media goals
Working without goals is working blindly. Goals will help you know what needs to be done at a given time, how to plan and how to achieve them. Your goals should be specific, measurable, appealing, realistic and timed (SMART) this will ensure you get social media success in Kenya.
Identify your audience
Your message can only be effective if it is designed to a specific customer. You can do this by creating a detailed customer avatar of your target audience by identifying their age, gender, average income, their place of residence and other facts that are important to your business.
The more you define your target audience, the more people you will be able to connect with hence the chances of making sales. In order to get social media success in Kenya, it is important that you define who you want to target your campaign.
Know what social media platforms suites you
Not every social media platform is best for your business. It will depend on where your target audience can be found. If you want to sell directly to the consumer, Facebook is the best platform to use. If you want to reach a younger audience, they can be found on Instagram and snap chat. When you want to target companies and businesses LinkedIn is your to go platform. Knowing this will help you save time and money and reach your desired audience.
Post relevant content and ensure consistency
Give people what they signed for. If your business sells products to make sure, they get the products and nothing less. Your content should be consistent on all your social media platforms. To ensure consistency, you can set a specific time on which you will be posting your content. You can also be scheduling your content for days you will not be available to post.
Engage your audience
Ensure there is engagement in your social media platforms by responding to your customer’s questions, concerns and recommendations. If there are any risen issues on your products respond fast to prevent misrepresentation of your company. Add links to your website so that people can purchase or learn more about your business.
Measure your results
Measure your social media activities and see what is working, what is not and how to improve on it. This should be in line with the goals you had set. If your social media goals were to create awareness, drive traffic or get engagement then get tools that will help you know what you have achieved.
How to find New and Potential Online Customers for your Business
Finding new and potential online customers for your business can sometimes be a hard task when you are a new business or an existing business and you want to attract new customers.
Register your business on Google my business
Put your website URL, contact information and directories for your business so that when people search for your kind of business they can find you and all your contact information online.
Come up with a customer acquisition plan
Know who your ideal customer for your product and services is. Learn their purchasing behavior and social media channels they use. With this information, you can construct a call to action advert that will capture their attention and use social media platforms that they use to advertise. This will enable you to reach the customers that you desire.
Use special offers to attract customer
Most people in Kenya are always attracted to offers on products and services. Either you can give a discount to a first time customer for the price of the product or on the delivery fee. This will attract more people to purchase your product or service.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Optimize your website and your content so that when people search for anything related to your business you can rank high in the search result. This will help you to be discoverable to people searching for products and services related to yours.
Follow up after meetings.
When you meet up with a prospect customer, always contact them back reminding them of the services that you offer and ask them if they are still interested. You can ask them to recommend your business to other people.
Use pay-per-click (PPC)
You can target your ads to reach people who are similar to your most likely prospects and are in the geographic region that you serve. For example young adults between the age of 18 and 26 who live in Nairobi.
Online Reviews in Kenya
Business owners often dismiss the significance of online reviews. Responding to online reviews builds trust with your customers and it shows that you value their feedback. It shows that your business is reliable and credible. Most of the consumers always rely on your online reviews to make their purchasing decision. Therefore, the way you respond to online reviews in Kenya matters.
Responding to online reviews also plays a significant role in Google search engine because Google wants to recommend a credible business to people who are searching. You should reply to both the positive and negative reviews
If you receive a negative review, it is important to reply to the comment in a courteous manner and maintain professionalism.
How to respond to Positive online reviews
Thank the customer.
Show your gratitude to the person who took their time to write a review. If they asked a question or had some concerns respond to them also. You can continue the conversation by asking the reviewer for the recommendation on either the service or the product. This will show that you value their feedback and they will feel appreciated.
Don’t Delay to respond
Always aim to respond as soon as possible to online reviews. This will show your customers that you are available and you care about what they have to say.
Entice your reviewers to come back
You can tell your customer that you would like to hear from them again and ask them to bring their friends.
Check for grammatical errors
Check for grammatical errors
Before you hit the send button always re-read what you have written and ensure there are no grammatical, punctuation or spelling mistakes. Always ensure that the tone of your message is professional and the message is as brief as possible and to the point.
How to reply to Negative online reviews
Apologize and thank them for their feedback
Apologize even if the customer is incorrect and thank them for giving honest feedback. Being aggressive and bitter when replying to the comments will only harm your reputation. If you find that you are too upset, distance yourself from it and reply when you have calmed down.
Respond appropriately
Remember that the online reviews are public hence be courteous and don’t argue with the customer.
Invite the conversation offline
Don’t argue with a customer on the review site, ask them for more details and provide them with customer care contact. Online reviews in Kenya are important for any organization. Always keep the conversation courteous and professional.
DIGITAL STRATEGY IN KENYA
Developing a Digital Strategy for your business is key because without a digital strategy your business is directionless. A digital strategy defines the clear online goals of a business in terms of building relationships with their existing customers or new ones. It allows you to reach your target audience more effectively. This is the first step towards digital success.
There are several reasons why your business needs a digital strategy in Kenya.
1. Sense of direction
A digital strategy will help you create achievable strategic goals for your business. This will help you set goals that should be achieved and set measurements that will get you there. Structuring a vision will ensure everyone in the organization is on the same page and working towards achieving the same goals and objectives.
2. Deeper Understanding of Your Target Audience
With a digital strategy, it will force you to think who your target audience will be. Understanding who your target audience is will allow you to know how to structure your message for your audience and where they can be found online. It allows you to know which social media platforms can be used to reach a certain group of people so that you don’t have to waste money and time testing different channels and means.
3. Budgeting and Return On Investment (ROI)
With a clear understanding of the focus point of your online marketing goals, you can preset solutions in advance for the foreseen future problems and plan ahead. A digital strategy will help you to understand how your digital budget will be distributed per channel and the returns you will receive. This will help you plan your budget thus making it easier to plan and manage. A good strategy will help you know what is working for you and what is not.
4. Setting up Objectives and analytics
A digital strategy helps you to know your marketing strategy and the steps you need to take to achieve them. A digital strategy will help a company to keep in line with the objectives it set and with time they can analyse the progress and see if they are moving in the right direction or not. Digital marketing provides a company with a variety of analytics tools that enables them to check the progress of their marketing.
We provide Digital Strategy Services in Kenya at an Affordable price. CONTACT US TODAY FOR FREE CONSULTATION !!
EMAIL MARKETING IN KENYA
Email marketing in Kenya is important as the Kenya National Bureau of statistics confirms that emails are mostly used as a channel for communication at the workplace and is increasingly used by Kenyan business people to push products and services.
For email marketing, you only have a few seconds to make an impression to your target audience therefore when done right, you can successfully drive conversions.
Do’s and Don’ts for Email Marketing
DO’s
1. Define the purpose of your email
Know what you want your subscriber to do when they see your email. Define the main objective for your email. Make sure your attractive call to action speaks for your objective.
2. Know your target audience
Be aware of who your target audience is and write an email that matches their needs.
3. Deliver value to the customer
A good email is the one that provides a solution to a problem that the customer is facing so that they can give your email their attention.
4. Use eye-catching language
Highlight words that will grab the attention of the subscriber that will be scanning your message looking for what they want. This words are like improve, Introducing, fast.
5. Include opt out in every email you send
People are always looking to see if the email they are subscribing to has a unsubscribe button in case they no longer want to receive an email from you. This will lead to more people subscribing just to see what you will be sending them if they know they can opt out when they want.
6. Send emails only to subscribers
When people subscribe to your email it means they want to receive the emails if they don’t want to receive the emails, then they won’t subscribe. Therefore don’t send emails to people who have not subscribed to receive them.
DON’Ts;
1. Avoid using redundant words
Avoid using unnecessary words in your email because you only have a few seconds to grab the readers attention
2. Avoid using technical jargon(if not needed)
People do not have time to invest in reading things they do not understand, therefore use simple language as much as you can.
3. Avoid making the email too long
Let your email be short and straight to the point. If you have too much content, use attractive visuals that matches what you’re talking about.
4. Don’t forget personalization
Do not write flats emails like a robot. Write emails that will interest your readers
5. Don’t design emails only for desktop
Do not assume that people only open their emails on their computers, also design it in a way people will be able to view it on smaller devices
We do email marketing in Kenya and create emails that your readers will look forward to receiving, want to open and be persuaded to buy from you. CALL US TODAY FOR FREE CONSULTATION!!
Why your business needs a Chatbot
A chatbot is a computer program designed to have a conservation with a human being over the internet. They can take information, broadcast newsletters, setup appointments, direct customers to your website and landing pages, they can handle FAQ’s and can even be turned into fun games and targeted marketing agents.
Think of it as a 24/7 salesman, customer service rep, and lead qualifier. It works around the clock while you’re on vacation, while you’re sleeping, or while you’re doing something else!
Chatbots are catching up fast in Kenya with banks, insurance companies like Jubilee insurance and Barclays bank being among the first to use the chatbot to help with their customer service. Other organizations are now adapting chatbot in their organizations.
Reasons why your business needs a chatbot
1. Increase Customer Engagement
It’s important for a business to keep its customers engaged with their brand. Chatbot make customer engagement more interactive and keep the conversation flowing without giving the client any unnecessary information. They are programmed to give answers to repetitive questions so that you can deal with other issues other than responding to easy questions.
2. Improve Customer Service
Chatbot provide extensive customer assistance as they allow you to start a conversation with each customer regarding any issue, anytime of the day. They provide assistance in real-time like a sale person in a real store. They are programmed to give answers to repetitive questions so that the agent can focus on more important cases rather than on the easy questions. This engagement will make your client feel acknowledged and this will improve your brand perception in the long run.
3. Minimal cost and Maximum returns
Platforms like Facebook Messenger provide the necessary infrastructure and an application programming interface (API) for creating these bots therefore making it cheap. Chatbot require minimal maintenance and there is no intensive work since it is automated.
4. Always open and available
No business can be open and functioning 24 hours a day. For most businesses in Kenya, once the business time is over any calls or emails will have to wait until the next day. However, with a chatbot, you can allow customers to ask questions and get answers at any day or time. They can make bookings, buy products and find a wealth of information about your business.
5. Better Marketing and More Sales
Chatbot can be useful for any industry, food chatbot can order dinner, banking and trading chatbot can deal with your finances, Ecommerce chatbot help you purchase goods and services and booking chatbot can book hotels and flights. They help customers choose products, process payment information, enter shipping addresses, and complete orders. This makes it easier than even talking to a human.
Chabot can help send products or services to customers who are more likely to convert into sales depending on users purchase or preference. It can also send coupons to users for in-store purchases or discounts.
Chatbot are definitely the cheapest and the fastest way of providing an engaging experience to your customers. If you would like to understand how they work and if your business requires a chatbot, get in touch with us. We provide chatbot services.
How to be Found on Google
Ranking high on the google search results is of great importance if you want to build a successful business. This will mean that more people searching your kind of business will be able to easily find you on google. This is also called SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which is the process of improving your websites ranking on search engines.
Considering that most people in Kenya refer to google whenever they want any kind of information be it directions, businesses contact information, jobs, services, products among other things.
1. Optimize for RankBrain
RankBrain is a machine learning algorithm that helps Google to determine the most relevant results to search engine queries. If you want to be found on google you need to be smart on how you create your content.
This requires you to focus on creating content that answers the unique questions that answers your audience so that the google Rankbrain can show your information when someone searches for it.
2. Submit Your Website URL to Google
It is not enough to design your website, you need to submit your website to google. This will enable google to find your content and to know of any important updates you might make. Search engines craw billions of pages that are on the web, collecting data and indexing content so if you have submitted your website to google your page will be easily found.
3. Select the Right Keywords
By google looking at the most common words used in your titles, content and meta tags, Google can understand what your business is about and show it in relevant search results. Key words can make or break your website. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Google’s autocomplete function to discover what your audience is looking for online.
4. Don’t Forget to Include Meta Tags
Use meta tags to tell people who are not familiar with your business what it is all about and why they should click on the results.
5. Add Your Website to Local Directories
If you want your page to show up high in research results optimize your site for local directories through Google Business Page. Include information such as your NAP (name, address and phone number), a map of your location, hours of operation and location based keywords such as the name of the city.
6. Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile Friendly
People in Kenya are now using their smartphones to read content online, book services and purchase good online. If you want your site to rank high in the search results, you need to have a mobile friendly site.
Create content that immediately answers your audiences questions and make sure your content loads fast and looks presentable regardless of the screen size.
You as a business person can follow the above process to rank high on the google search result or you can come to us as we offer SEO (search engine optimization) services and let a professional handle it for you, so you can do what you do best, your business.
Get in touch with us for FREE CONSULTATION!
Mistakes to avoid when identifying influencers for your brand
Social media Influencers in Kenya have emerged with many content creators investing in online channels that have amassed a large following.
Most influencers in Kenya are on YouTube and Instagram. You should be able to identify the ones that will represent your brand like you would want.
If you don’t identify your influencer correctly, then you will not be able to get your brand out there hence loosing your money with no gain. Try and avoid these mistakes for you to yield more success in our influencer campaigns.
1. Forcing a collaboration with an influencer who is clearly not a fan of the brand
Marketers should be targeting influencers who already have a positive believe towards their brand. Identify influencers who have interacted with your product or service before so that during negotiations you can tell if they are authentically excited to promote your product or if they only want to do it for money. The most successful influencer partnership is authentic.
If you notice any negative sentiment and lack of excitement from the influencer, this means that he or she will not represent your brand effectively.
2. Overlooking the demographics of an influencer’s audience
It is important for you to take into consideration the influencer’s audience so that you can know if the influencer has the target audience that you need for your brand.
If your target audience is females in Kenya within the age of 18-35 years you should check if most of the influencer’s followers are females ranging in that age group.
3. Putting too much weight on number of followers and not enough on engagement
As a business person in Kenya do not assume that any influencer with a large follower will be a good person to partner with. Also the quality of the content the influencer will post and how he or she will engage with the target audience will matter.
Check if the influencer’s recommendation will receive any action from the followers. You can achieve this by checking the previous likes and comments from the influencer’s page when they recommended something to their audience.
4.Targeting influencers whose feed is over saturated with sponsored content
Most of the influencers in Kenya and around the world do not want to create their own content but to use sponsored content. This will be a major turn off to the followers who don’t want to feel like they are constantly being sold to.
If you are looking for an influencer to promote your brand look for one that creates their own content and has connected with their audience from that.
Google is expanding when it shows ads to ‘people in targeted locations’
This advanced Google Ads location update, is going to apply to commuters whether they are on the road, at home or at work. Meaning that your ads will show to people who are physically at your targeted location in time of their search and also those who regularly travel to your targeted area even if when they search they are not physically there.
This means that if your ads target location is Nairobi Kenya, the people physically living in Nairobi will see the ad. The ad is also going to be seen by someone who searched for your target location which is Nairobi Kenya and lives in Nakuru but he or she travels to Nairobi regularly or passes by Nairobi to another location.
Google has changed “people in your targeted locations” option to “people in or are regularly in your targeted locations”. This is unlike the previous setting of “Reach people in your targeted locations” which only showed ads to people who searched for your targeted location and where there physically while they were searching.
This means that your location-targeted campaigns can reach people with ads targeted to their work locations when they are home and vice versa.
This will be a great win for Kenyans running Google Ads especially in the competitive markets like real estate, tourism, insurance etc who not only want people in a certain location, but can get business from people who frequent that location but live elsewhere.
Googles other services like Google Maps have been absorbed very well in Kenya, with most Kenyans using it almost daily to check traffic updates, new places and new roads to get to their destinations.