Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide 2021
Most businesses in Kenya and around the world have now discovered the importance and the power of social media after covid-19 affected their businesses. As you take your businesses online it’s important to have a few ideas on how to go about it so that you just don’t go blindly, hence the social media marketing strategy guide 2021. This guide will help you know why an annual marketing plan is important for your marketing. Your marketing strategy is like a high-level plan that guides the direction of your company’s goals, campaigns and growth.
How to create a Marketing Plan
1. Conduct a situation analysis.
2. Define your target audience.
3. Write SMART goals.
4. Analyze your tactics.
5. Set your budget.
1. Conduct a situation analysis.
It’s important to know what your current situation is, therefore you need to know your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It’s the first step to creating a marketing plan. You should also try and understand the current market situation as well as doing a competitor analysis so that you can know how you compare to your competitors.
Your market analysis can contain the “seven Ps of marketing’ such as product, pricing, place, promotion, process, people and physical evidence.
Your buyer persona has choices when it comes to solving their problems, choices in both the types of solutions they consider and the providers that can administer those solutions. Look at the gaps in your competitor’s approach, what they are missing, how their products are better than yours, what you can do to have a competitive advantage and what sets you apart.
Therefore, while doing a competitor analysis you can consider positioning, pricing, market share and offerings.
2. Define your target audience.
After figuring out your company’s situation and your market, now start to think about who your target audience is. You can kick start with making a buyer persona, this will include demographic information such as age, gender and income. However, it will also include psychographic information such as pain points and goals. What drives your audience? What problems do they have that your product or service can fix?
Download your free social media marketing strategy guide here
3. Write SMART 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.
For you to actualize your goals they need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-specific. These make SMART goals. You can read our article on how to set smart goals
4. Analyze your tactics.
After you have done all the above, you now need to figure out the tactics that will help you achieve your goals and the right channels and action plans to focus on.
For example, If you want to get more engagement on your social media posts, you can have giveaways that will require people to comment or tag friends. Therefore the tactics that you will undertake will also be dependent on your goals or plan because each will require a different tactic.
5. Set your budget
You need to set your budget for various marketing needs like social media advertising, social media management, events, marketing software among others.
Your budget describes how much money the business has allocated the marketing team to pursue the initiatives and goals outlined in the elements above.
Below is a free strategy document you can fill in with your company details to help you set out what is necessary to succeed in social media.
Whether you run your social media marketing inhouse or you have assistance, this will go a long way in setting your goals and getting you closer to achieving them.
Download your free social media marketing strategy guide here
Come up with your Digital strategy like a Pro
Plan your strategy
This really means thinking about why you’re doing something before you do it.
So, starting your digital marketing strategy is as simple as starting with why you want to do it, deciding what you want to do, how you’re going to do it, what you expect to happen, and when and how you’ll measure your success.
5 steps for setting your strategy
1. SET A MEASURABLE GOAL
“I want to make sure 100% of my current customers know I offer product video services. I will run email and social media promotions to share this message for 2 months. After 2 months from the start of the promotion, I want to have at least 1 video job from 15% of my current customers.”
2. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Get to know your audience. If you don’t understand enough about who you’re trying to reach, you’ll struggle to deliver a message that’s relevant enough that resonates with them.
Make your own buyer personas — fictionalized, general descriptions of your key customer groups.
- Think about who your customers are & group them into 3 or 4 buckets.
- Take each of those and create a character from each.
- Give him or her a name, a photo, a personality, and a few favourite hobbies.
3. KNOW YOUR BRAND
Your brand is how & why your customers choose you over your competitors. You can think of it as your company’s personality. So it’s something that’s worth defining clearly —what do you stand for?
What are your strongest character traits? And how does that translate into your presence—from the images you use on your website to the language you use in your emails?
4. WATCH YOUR COMPETITION
Your competitors aren’t just those who offer a like-for-like product or service. You can think of your competition in 3 ways:
Direct competitors – those brands that offer the same products or services as you.
Indirect competitors – brands that may offer different products but compete for the same space or budget as you.
Comparators – these might have a similar look and feel like your brand or be other brands that your target customers use frequently too.
Get inspired by your competitors’ wins, and use your differences to highlight what’s unique about what you’re offering.
5. GET READY TO MEASURE
Having brilliant ideas for how you’ll drive traffic, build brand awareness, and grow your customer base is just the beginning, it’s crucial you know how you’ll track progress
GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE!
If you posted a new blog post that included some video content on the page, look at how many:
- Views you get
- Views of the video
- Engagement with the video (likes, comments, shares)
- Clicks to your blog CTA
- Leads from the post
- Increase in leads from the post vs. posts without videos
Best Times to Post on Social Media During COVID-19
The Pandemic has affected a lot of things and social media is one of them. The lockdown put in place as a measure to curb the spread of the virus, as well as people working from home, has led to a massive increase in social media usage. This has led to a significant shift in when people are active.
According to a recent report by sprout on data gathered between March and April, the best time to post on Facebook based on overall engagements trends are on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 am to 11 am.
The report also noted that on Facebook, every day at 11 am saw a slight peak in engagement compared to the rest of the day. If you are looking to maximize the reach of Facebook, you might consider that mid-morning gap.
On Instagram, Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 11 am and also Tuesday at 2 pm. Previously, sprout had identified Wednesday 11 am and Friday from 10 am -11 am as the best time to post on Instagram.
On Twitter sprout previously had noted that Wednesday and Friday at 9 am were the best time to post. Currently, Friday 7 am – 9 am are the best time to post on twitter with 9 am showing the peak of activity.
On LinkedIn, the best time to post is Wednesday at 3 pm, Thursday 9-10 am and Friday from 11 am -12 pm.
This data is not prescriptive, you can only determine the true best time to post for your business by experimenting and seeing how your audience responds
Social Media Platforms
Did you know how big the social media platforms are?
Check below…
Facebook: In any given month, approximately 1.28 BILLION people are active on Facebook – roughly equivalent to the entire population of India, the world’s second most-populous country.
LinkedIn: Approximately 41% of millionaires use LinkedIn, and Two new users join LinkedIn every second.
Twitter: Almost half of all Twitter accounts – 44 % – have never sent a tweet.
Instagram: Instagram’s per-follower engagement rate is 58 times higher than Facebook’s and 120 times higher than Twitter’s.
Pinterest: More than 70% of Pinterest’s user base is female.
Makes you think a little doesn’t it? I know these times of fun facts always make me realize how prominent social media has become over the last few years. Food for thought …
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