Style markets are growing more and more competitive as the value of the business grows. In order to stay competitive, businesses need to maintain control of their image and marketing in innovative ways. Let’s dig into how to market a clothing brand and how these steps can benefit your business!
Businesses are faced with challenges every day when planning campaigns for their brands. Between working hard to find the best ways to share content with your audience, bring in leads, and drive conversions, it’s easy to get lost in the details and forget the big picture of what you’re trying to achieve!
A marketing strategy plan is just that – a big picture. It can help you step back and look at how all your individual marketing actions work together, then guide all aspects of your marketing. What follows are comprehensive and simple steps on how to complete a marketing strategy plan for your brand!
A marketing strategy plan is a broad look at how a business approaches reaching its audience. Marketing strategy creates a birds-eye view of how a brand can engage with its audience and defines key elements such as the business’s value proposition and core brand messaging.
There are four components of a marketing strategy plan that should be taken into account: product (or service), price, place, and promotion.
Understanding how your business will approach these four elements is critical for your success.
If you have been getting by just fine without creating a formal marketing strategy up until this point: good for you!
However, this can be a risky approach, especially as marketing strategies, platforms, and methods evolve with the current times.
If search algorithms shift in the wrong direction, a new competitor steps into the arena, or if your audience catches onto a different trend, it can be difficult for you to adjust without a proper strategy on how to respond.
It may seem difficult or unnecessary, especially if you’re a small business. However, creating a marketing plan for busy and small business owners can take as little as 30 minutes!
You may be wondering, what’s the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan? Aren’t those the same thing? In fact, they’re not!
A marketing strategy outlines how a company will achieve a particular goal. This includes the content, networking channels, software, and campaigns that will be used to achieve that goal. It also includes ways that the business will evaluate and track its progress and success.
Meanwhile, a marketing plan focuses on how your marketing strategy will be executed. It’s the foundation for how your business will achieve its goals. The difference can be better understood as big picture vs small picture. One cannot exist without the other.
Without a marketing plan, it will be more difficult to set your sights on your goals. Without a marketing strategy, it will be harder to execute your plans to achieve the goals you set.
To better understand the difference and relationship between marketing strategy and marketing planning, a fashion brand is a good place to start.
Before the business can start working toward success, it needs to understand its goals and come up with an overarching marketing strategy for how to achieve them. The business needs to evaluate its audience and come up with concrete marketing plans to achieve those goals.
For example, the business may be in outdoor and hiking clothes. They can then identify their audience more specifically and come up with more specific goals.
After the business marketing plan is complete, the business can develop specific strategies to realize its vision. For example, they may decide that a content marketing campaign during the spring or winter will be effective because their customers may want to prepare for the warmer weather in the summertime.
They can measure their progress via metrics they set and adjust in response to market changes.
If you want to make an effective marketing strategy to form the foundation of how your business will achieve its goals, here is a comprehensive list of steps that will help you do just that!
The first step in creating a marketing strategy is to know your brand. It’s essential for every business to acknowledge who they are, their mission, goals, methods, and unique selling points.
Part of this is a value proposition, what your business can deliver to your audience. This unique selling point is what will help you better understand what your goals should be and create the context for what you’re going to do to reach them.
Business goals are objectives your team aims to achieve. Remember to distinguish short-term goals from long-term ones. Use SMART Goals to guide you through this process:
This takes the first step of knowing yourself and takes it a step further. Where the first step of knowing your business was more about vision and your value proposition, your marketing audit is more about evaluating the status of your current marketing activities and the resources you have on hand right now!
Don’t throw out your past work, either! You can always learn from what you’ve done in the past. Look at what has worked and what hasn’t. Come up with ideas of what you can do better. Take a closer look as well at the people, knowledge, and tools that you have at your disposal as well.
A marketing analysis involves understanding how you fit in an industry, your competitors, your audience, and other variables in the market. You can use a SWOT Analysis to help you evaluate this. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Understand how each of these applies to your brand and consider these aspects for your marketing strategy.
It’s important for you to do research into your competitors and see what they’re doing well, and what could be better.
This is also the stage of your planning process where you want to define your marketing channels. For example, you will need to choose which social media platforms make the most sense for your brand to focus on, based on where your audience most likely is.
Keeping your marketing quantifiable and trackable involves setting specific metrics you want to track. These are called Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and are very important for you to keep track of over the course of your marketing. KPIs help you understand how close you are to achieving your goal. An example of a KPI might be website traffic or social follower count.
Every business needs to track relevant KPIs. In fact, KPIs are directly impacted by the objectives that have been defined by your business! It also involves asking ‘key performance questions about your marketing. For example:
Knowing your target audience is one of the most critical components of marketing. Instead of selecting an audience at random, think carefully about who would want to buy your product.
Do demographic research into this group to understand them more deeply and to learn about their interests. Some demographics you’ll probably want to know are age ranges, gender, geographical location, hobbies, and interests.
More importantly, you’ll need to identify their pain points. This is how you’ll help make their lives easier!
A pain point is a particular problem that your audience faces. Problems like these are opportunities for you to connect with your audience and give them exactly what they want and need.
There are a few types of pain points:
You can find pain points through several methods. Research can help, but it can only take you so far. Customer interviews are a great way to get better acquainted with the people you are trying to reach and understand their problems. Reviews of your business can also help you understand opportunities to improve and provide new or revised products and services.
Now that you’ve identified the pain points for your audience, it’s time to identify how you’ll solve their problems!
Once you have identified those problems, it’s crucial that you acknowledge what your business can provide to alleviate the issues your customers are experiencing. Create a list of actions you need to complete your strategy.
Consider all the tools you will need to complete these tasks. It’s also important that you consider who will be carrying out each task. Delegate effectively to ensure that your strategy is carried out efficiently.
A marketing budget is the cost of your marketing strategy plan. It’s the cost of achieving your goals. It may have sounded very challenging to create a marketing budget before you started this journey. However, now that you’ve gone through all the steps up until this point, it’s a lot easier! If you’ve been thorough about your goals and how you intend to achieve them, it’s much easier to quantify the cost.
There are a few important stages involved in determining your budget:
Before you jump into your marketing strategy process, make sure you consider when you will be putting specific parts of that plan into action. Implementation times are when you intend on executing certain actions of your strategy.
One of the best ways to do this is to keep a calendar of events and who will execute them. The people to who you delegate these tasks are contributors.
A useful tool that can help, aside from a calendar, is a Gantt chart. Similar to a calendar, this chart helps you visualize what each task is, when they begin and end, their duration, event overlap, who will execute each task, and when the larger project begins and ends.
You’ve done a lot of hard work up until this point and you’ve come a long way!
Your marketing strategy plan is underway, and you are set for success. The last cherry on top for your brand is to monitor and measure your progress.
This stage is essential for your continued growth because it can provide insightful data that will help you make decisions regarding your current and future marketing strategies. It also helps you pivot when necessary to react to changes in the market or your audience’s interests.
Marketing strategies are critical for every business to ensure that its goals are being met and that its results are being monitored and recorded.
It’s a good idea to consider marketing strategies specifically developed to strengthen a particular aspect of your marketing.
Some of the most popular types of specific marketing strategies are brand positioning strategies, content strategies, social media strategies, email marketing strategies, and paid media strategies.
This strategy focuses chiefly on furthering the voice and image of your business. The advantages of this strategy are that it can actively influence your business’s reputation with your audience, influencing their viewpoint on your brand.
This is all about connecting your unique value with your audience at every aspect of your funnel. This allows you to strategically create meaning in the mind of your audience when they see your brand.
A content strategy involves creating and distributing content that advances your marketing goals. This is one of the best ways to boost your digital marketing.
Potential customers use search engines every day, and this strategy allows you to leverage your content to attract and convert these potential customers. One of the key elements of this strategy is creating relevant content. It could be in the form of videos, blogs, infographics, podcasts, white papers, webinars, or eBooks. Whatever your content is, think critically about how it can benefit your business strategy.
A social media strategy focuses on marketing to users on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more.
A critical component of successful social media strategies is that they outline the content that can be shared across multiple social media channels. Successful plans also take into account how the branch should interact with its audience. This makes it much easier to manage multiple social media profiles! Another important aspect of social media strategy is that it gives people access to information about your brand that they find relevant.
This gives them the opportunity to share that information on social media with friends and family. This can help you attract even more customers!
An email marketing strategy focuses on converting potential customers into email subscribers. Once users turn into subscribers, the brand can regularly distribute emails that drive customers and potential customers to the brand to make purchases.
This can be especially effective to keep people coming back for additional purchases by suggesting new content. Email is convenient, and this encourages recipient engagement. It’s also possible to use workflow automation to schedule personalized emails for each client.
Email marketing strategies can also generate a great return on investment.
A paid media strategy is all about buying advertising online. There are a lot of different kinds of paid media that are available for marketing. For example, there are social media ads, display ads, video ads, pop-ups, paid search results, and many other kinds of promoted media.
Paid media is particularly great at boosting traffic, clicks, and brand awareness!
Now that you know how to create a business marketing strategy, you’re ready to get out there and make one! Always remember that it’s incredibly important to always follow each of the steps covered in this guide when creating your plans.
Every step plays a critical role in creating your marketing strategy. If you follow each step, have great attention to detail, and have clear and well-defined goals, you’ll be able to better drive more conversions and achieve a better return on investment.
One way to make this entire process easier is to use an app like Tailwind that can help you create and schedule content across your most-used platforms, including email! Best of all, you can use many of our great features for free with our forever-free plan!
First of all, social media should be non-negotiable in a company’s marketing efforts.
Not convinced? Let’s take a and see what social media marketing can do for your business:
And, sure, anyone can post consistently on social media, especially with the help of a social media management tool.
But having a strategy and tracking what does and doesn’t work will help you get where you’re headed even faster!
And the best part? Building a social media marketing strategy isn’t nearly as hard or time-consuming as you’d think! In fact, I’d say with a few tips you could go from sporadic growth to a steady climb in reach and engagement.
Curious to know how? You’re in luck because we put together a real social media strategy template.
First things first! What is social media strategy? This is a marketing practice used to promote your business and boost business goals, such as brand awareness, on popular social media platforms. It includes steps like outlining KPIs, goals, and of course content!
If you’ve already nailed down how your business goals translate to your marketing goals, skip ahead to how to set up your social media marketing strategy goals.
Though it’s true almost every business does benefit from having a social media presence, not every business is the same. In crafting a social media marketing strategy, it’s important to consider your business’s specific relationship to social media.
Speaking of relationships, let’s ask some intimate questions.
Do you have the right business for social media marketing ads? Is the effort toward posting across every platform relevant to your business’s brand? Are your targets highly engaged in other brands’ content like yours on social media?
Not every business needs to do it all, and your social media strategy will largely depend on your targeted audience. But, how do you know what’s right for your business? Well, friends. Just like dating, you’ve got to know who you are and what you want in order to go anywhere. So, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and discuss the 3 business love languages (sometimes you just gotta keep running with a metaphor) to put together a social media strategy.
The core of knowing how your business should use social media has to do with understanding your brand. If you’ve yet to create a brand, check out our resources on tips to build a brand. Branding before any marketing strategy is incredibly important, especially with social media marketing. Branding is knowing who you are, which is crucial to knowing your audience.
Social media is content-centric. The aesthetics, the voice, and the posting style of your content will represent your brand across the internet. It’s vital to decide this before posting content so there aren’t major brand inconsistencies in what is being posted on your social media accounts. This can confuse prospects, prevent them from remembering you in the future, and cause them to unfollow you.
Once your branding is established, it’s important to know your target audience. Where do they spend their time? What social media apps is your age demographic on the most? This is important to consider when drafting your strategy. We wrote an article on which social platform is best for your business. As it addresses different demographics tend to spend time on some platforms more than others.
Go deep into understanding what your target audience is interested in, where they live, what their living situations are like, what the problems are that they are facing, what their relationship status is, and more!
Next is budget…does your business have a social media budget? Is your business willing to invest in ads if they’re relevant for your brand’s final social media marketing strategy? Creating social media accounts is free and easy to do, once you know your brand, audience, and budget, we can start strategizing. Muhahahaha!
From measuring analytics and key performance indicators to studying competitor’s strategies, and planning your content – this section will cover all the basics of developing the best social media strategy. Let’s get buzzin.
When coming up with a social media marketing strategy there are some key analytics to keep an eye on that will greatly boost your success. Most apps will track your analytics for you, allowing you to see your reach and engagement with each post.
And some key performance indicators to keep track of are: reach, clicks, engagement, hashtag performance, organic and paid likes, and audience demographics.
Another helpful idea is to run a campaign that’s set over a period of time with certain metric goals in mind. A business can learn a lot from a campaign on what does and doesn’t work for your brand.
Overall, goals should be SMART. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
You can also read more on how to calculate social media ROI to track how your social media strategy is affecting your bottom line.
A great way to get ideas and inspiration is by conducting competitor research. Pay attention to their social media. How often do they post? What types of posts perform the best? What strategies are they using?
Now let’s look at some examples of social media strategies that were hugely successful!
After Dove discovered that 70% of women don’t feel represented in media and advertising, Dove set out on a campaign of inclusion.
Dove created a photo library of real women who use their products with the Instagram hashtag generating over 647k posts!
2. Friskies and Buzzfeed: Dear Kitten Campaign
Friskies, Buzzfeed, and video creator Ze Frank teamed up to create a social media campaign for an older cat giving advice to a kitten. The campaign went viral, with the videos generating over 32 million views!
These genius mastermind projects did a phenomenal job at creating entertaining and unique content with good-feeling topics that were more than shareable.
3. Procter and Gamble: #DistanceDance
Procter and Gamble, a consumer-packaged-goods company came up with a campaign to promote dancing during COVID in a safe way to stay connected and have fun. The goal was to encourage people to stay home and record their dance moves.
The campaign was a huge hit, generating over 8 billion views and 1.9 million videos in its first week, and currently has 18 billion views!
Why was this so successful? They aligned their values and social responsibility in order to bring awareness to their brand and it worked like perfection.
Based on your understanding of branding, budget, target audience, KPI goals, and your competitor research on other brands’ strategies, decide what strategy of your own is best for your business!
This section will be alllll about strategic social media marketing and planning. Let’s get to it!
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One of the best ways to help assure a successful content marketing plan and organize and implement your social media marketing strategy is by creating a content calendar. The most important factors in tracking your analytics and finding out what is working are consistency, frequency, and the passing of time. You’ll have a harder time knowing what works if you don’t have reliable consistent data to track.
The more engaging your content is, the wider your reach will be. Try spin-off Tik Tok videos, relatable content, or sharing social issues that pertain to your brand or you care about. Show your brand’s personality.
Is it upbeat, sassy, strictly educational, or easy-breezy? Make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible, invest in a photography course, or get signed up with Tailwind Create to easily create professional graphic-designed posts.
Coming up with a full strategy is daunting enough! There is a whole plethora of tools and templates out there, such as Tailwind’s, to help you plan and create beautiful posts that will help you save time!
Want to learn more? Check out our post on the 8 Best Design Tools for Creating Stunning Social Media Content!
Other than actually posting consistently, one of the most important parts of a social media strategy is reviewing what’s working, improving, and re-strategizing. Not everything is going to work, but you learn from the highs and lows, and then you get better each time.
Whether it’s on a monthly or quarterly basis make sure to review your social media analytics. That way you’re continually staying on top of the data. Doing so helps you see if your social media marketing campaign is on track, along with if your strategy is working. Plus, it sets up discussion points in review sessions
Need help tracking your analytics? Tailwind App offers smarter analytics to track your profile’s performance, inspect your posts to find the top-performing ones, and gives you daily, weekly, and monthly analytics reports!
Review sessions are about seeing what is and isn’t working and how to move forward. Bringing other team members in for a session to discuss, review reports, and brainstorm future strategies is the ideal way to accomplish social media strategy on an ongoing basis. Teamwork makes the dream work, am I right?
Here are some ideas on how to start your first, or next brainstorming session:
Follow these simple steps and you’ll be sure to take your social media growth and engagement up quite a few notches! Until next time, friends!
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Every business’s details are going to look a little bit different, but the basics of every social media strategy contain the following:
You can find inspiration for your content from all over the place! Some common areas are:
Deciding which social media platform is going to be best for you is going to wholly depend on your already understanding your brand, your voice, and your business goals. Once you have a grasp on that you can then pick the best platforms for you!
Snapchat: For an audience younger than 35. This platform allows for faster, less polished content that a business can update followers with. Want to tease a new nail polish coming out? Perhaps you have an event you want to promote and show off to followers that couldn’t make it. It’s great for all of these and more!
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Marketing is essential for all businesses, even nonprofits. In a world dominated by digital media, changing industries, and other factors, it’s essential for marketers to know how to reach their audiences. In this guide, we’ll discuss how to create a nonprofit marketing plan.
Nonprofit marketing is the lifeblood of engagement and outreach for an organization like yours. This isn’t just about finding ways to reach donors but also promoting your message and ideals to your audience.
A marketing plan is essential for nonprofits to succeed. Having a strategy of your objectives and methods will help keep your marketing consistent, on schedule, and within your budget. There are a number of reasons why nonprofit marketing is valuable:
Nonprofits may not be looking for money in the same way that other businesses are, but you still need a budget.
Without donors, your projects risk losing the funding they need to succeed. The more that you can accrue, the greater potential your projects have for succeeding.
People who don’t know about your organization or its goals won’t donate. Marketing helps your organization expand its vision outward and attract new donors.
By making people more aware of your organization, its objectives, and your projects, you vastly increase the likelihood that someone will become a donor.
Nonprofit marketing plans can help raise expand your audience and bring greater attention to the objectives you are trying to achieve. The wider your audience, the wider your pool of potential donors.
Marketing isn’t just about gaining new donors and audiences. It’s also about maintaining your relationship with your current donors. Spreading awareness about your organization’s activities can help bring more attention to the good work you’re doing, and that can greatly improve your reputation as a nonprofit. This makes it more likely that current donors will continue to trust your organization.
With a digital nonprofit marketing plan, you can improve your organization’s ranking on search engines and social media sites like Instagram. This can take your organization’s influence global, attracting people from around the world who are searching for keywords that are relevant to your objectives.
Marketing can help attract new donors, but it can also maintain your relationship with existing donors. It’s important to make sure that your current donors are encouraged to keep contributing to your cause so that you can maintain a steady stream of funding for your projects and campaigns.
There are a few critical foundations that organizations need to pay attention to when building a nonprofit marketing plan. T
hese are branding, execution, analysis, and response. Together, these form the backbone of your marketing plan by establishing the visual representation of your plan, how you’ll measure your success, and how you will change in response to positive or negative results.
Every nonprofit marketing plan needs to have a plan for branding. It’s extremely important to pay attention to how outside observers see your organization. Think carefully about how you want your nonprofit to be seen, and make sure that what you choose remains consistent across every marketing platform.
Branding is how people recognize that your organization is unique. Ideally, they should be able to immediately recognize that a logo or other piece of media from your nonprofit is yours. That branding should also be consistent.
The best example of this is a nationwide restaurant. Let’s say you order a sandwich from one restaurant. You then travel to the same restaurant in a different location and order the same sandwich. You would expect that both sandwiches should taste the same.
The same applies to your nonprofit organization. Your color logo, color scheme, fonts, tone of voice, and more are all part of your branding and should be accounted for in your plan.
It’s important to consider how you will execute your marketing plan. Are you building a campaign that will last several months? Are you constructing a general plan for the next several years? What exactly will you do over that period to accomplish your goals? These are all questions that nonprofit marketers need to answer to create their strategy.
It’s important to think about a few things when coming up with the execution of their plan, such as,
Generally, the more detail that you can go into when planning your marketing, the better. Understand deeply what you plan to do, how it will be done, and why. Writing down a nonprofit marketing plan can help keep track of these ideas for your team.
It’s important to make sure that your nonprofit marketing plan takes account for analysis. As you construct your plan, make room for recording information. This could be quantitative data in the form of website and social analytics, website views, social media likes and follows, number of donors, and how much each donor contributes. This could also be qualitative data, such as surveys from donors.
Having this data and collecting it over time is critical for measuring the success of your marketing plan. Without analysis, you won’t be able to see if your marketing plan is successful or not.
This is a commonly overlooked step when creating a nonprofit marketing plan. Having information when doing analysis is helpful, but it means nothing if action isn’t taken in response to it. For example, if your marketing isn’t getting as many donors as you expected according to your data, it’s important to explore why that might be. After thinking about this, it may be wise to take action to pivot and change the plan in an intelligent manner.
Changing your strategy isn’t always a bad thing. Staying steady with a marketing strategy that isn’t working can be extremely costly for a nonprofit, especially when donors are on the line. Instead of running a flawed marketing strategy into the ground, listen to your analytics and pivot before it’s too late.
If your analysis shows that you are gaining more conversions than expected, maybe it’s time to scale up your marketing strategy further! Pay close attention to the data you collect and take action to make the most of your nonprofit marketing plan.
With these foundational elements in mind, you can create a marketing plan for your nonprofit organization more easily. Let’s go through it step by step.
Before coming up with any kind of nonprofit marketing plan, consider what your objectives are. This can go beyond simply attracting more donors. Understanding why you need the funding and what you are ultimately trying to achieve will be more helpful when coming up with the shape of your marketing strategy. Going beyond the monetary aspects will also help your marketing stay grounded and connected with your donors.
One way to understand your objectives is the SMART goals method. This stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
It’s important to be as specific as possible to ensure that you aren’t straying away from what really matters. Make sure that your goal is also measurable. For example, you can track the number of donors and their contributions.
It’s also critical that your goals are achievable. Make sure that you aren’t being unrealistic in your expectations and reaching too far out of your budget and ability.
Make sure that your objectives are also relevant to your organization’s values and objectives. Finally, make sure that you keep your plan bound by deadlines to make sure that the pieces of your plan are accomplished in a timely manner.
It may be a good idea to discuss the SMART goals tenets with your colleagues to have a better understanding of the goals of your business. This can help give you a more diverse understanding of what the people in your organization want to achieve.
If you are having trouble making your objectives more specific and measurable, look closely at what your organization needs to succeed. How are you mainly getting funding, or where could you be getting funding that you currently aren’t?
Before you can come up with any kind of marketing, it’s vital to understand your target audience. Research in this stage is critical because it not only will tell you who your potential donors are but also what interests them and what they value. If you can align with their values, you will be more likely to make conversions to achieve more funding.
It may seem like a good idea to target as many people as possible to reach the most potential donors, but this isn’t always the best idea. If your campaign is too broad you may not reach the people most likely to contribute as easily. In fact, you may even alienate them from the campaign entirely!
It’s better to have a deeper understanding of who cares about your nonprofit organization, who your work directly impacts, and who has money available to contribute to your cause. If you can tailor your campaigns to these people, you will be more likely to succeed.
Your marketing plan ultimately is intended to expand your organization’s budget for projects, but every marketer has to start from somewhere. It’s important to understand what funds you have at your disposal and how much each aspect of your plan will cost. Keep track of this continuously as you come up with the pieces of your strategy. Don’t overextend yourself and use the resources you have wisely.
Before beginning, it’s important to examine existing marketing strategies your organization is using and has used in the past. What has worked in the past? What didn’t work? Think carefully about how you can leverage that information to your advantage.
A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis can be a great starting point when auditing previous marketing strategies. Start by listing details you notice under each category, like this:
| Strengths | Weaknesses | Opportunities | Threats |
|---|---|---|---|
| What worked well for your marketing strategy? | What didn’t work as well for your organization’s marketing? | What could your organization have done to take advantage of strengths, or correct weaknesses? | What stood in the way of your success? What could prove problematic in the future if uncorrected? |
Make sure that you continue to perform these audits for each marketing strategy you come up with. In marketing, it’s okay to make mistakes. However, it’s critical that we learn from those mistakes to improve our work in the future. A lot of what goes into a successful campaign is experimentation. You won’t know the best route to take until you try it.
Keep track of all the data that you collect for review later, it will definitely come in handy when planning your next campaign!
What exactly is part of your nonprofit marketing plan? Do you plan to create posters? Run live events? Post on your organization’s website and social media accounts? Reach donors with weekly emails? What you choose is up to you, no matter how broad or how narrow. This will depend on your objectives, your budget, your target audience, and other factors.
Regardless, each of these ‘executables’ should be kept track of. Know the purpose of each, how much they will cost, when they will be implemented, and who will create and implement them.
Now that you know what you want to do in your nonprofit marketing plan, create a schedule of these executables so that you know when they will take place over time. If you need to pivot at any point, leave room to rearrange some of these events if possible. Pivoting strategies can be expensive, but it’s also possible that a pivot could help you avoid an even more dangerous loss in donations.
Information can change over the course of your marketing campaign. If your plan involves email marketing about news and events, it may be impossible to predict what these messages will look like in advance. However, you can get a head start by providing your team with templates to work with. Creating email templates, sample newsletters, and basic outlines of blog posts can help you get a head start on producing content to reduce the rush when the time comes.
As you plan your templates, leave some room for automatic personalization. For example, in email marketing, you can add placeholders for the recipient’s name. It might appear as, “[RECIPIENT], We Need Your Help!” The bracketed text can be replaced with the recipient’s name with whatever software you’re using to run your email campaign.
It can seem daunting to put all of the previous steps into a single, written plan for your nonprofit organization. However, writing down your thoughts can be extremely helpful for the success and implementation of your plan. Marketing plans can be complex and hard to keep track of, but a written document can be a great reference over the course of the campaign.
Once you’ve created the document, you can present it to organization leadership for discussion and approval. Documents like this make discussing and analyzing marketing plans much easier and more efficient.
There are a number of different ways that you can implement a nonprofit marketing strategy. Some avenues that you can approach digitally are social media, website blogging, and email marketing.
Just like regular businesses, nonprofits can utilize social media to expand their outreach and connect with current and potential donors. However, since social media is most often used by consumers instead of businesses, it can be easy to approach this without an effective strategy. Instead, make sure that you are approaching social media marketing for your organization methodically and thoughtfully.
There are a number of reasons why social media is an effective outreach tool for your nonprofit organization:
Tailwind is an effective social media management tool that can help your nonprofit succeed. With a variety of automation tools, Tailwind helps make social media marketing on Instagram and Pinterest easier than ever.
Get ideas and get designs suggested to you automatically to schedule posts to save time. Optimization tools are also available to help your posts succeed. Best of all, it’s easy to get started using it for free.
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Your website’s blog isn’t just a place to share your nonprofit organization’s latest news. It’s also a critical tool that can help people find your website when using search engines.
One of the most valuable things to consider when creating blog posts for your nonprofit marketing plan is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is a practice by which you create website content in such a way that it’s more likely to be seen by search engines.
Your ultimate goal should be to rank as high as possible for a valuable keyword. Think carefully about what keywords your audience is searching for. Be as specific as you can to your organization’s particular niche. For example, if your organization is dedicated to preserving trees in a local watershed, you may target keywords like “how to save trees” or “how to plant a tree in [location]”.
If you are a local business, you may want to target long-tail keywords. These are longer keywords that are more specific and generally have less traffic. However, despite having less traffic, long-tail keywords may have more conversions.
In contrast, short tail keywords like “how to donate food” are much harder to rank for because they have a lot of competition from other websites. For a local business, “how to donate food in Philadelphia” may be more appropriate.
An effective way to enrich your nonprofit marketing strategy is to utilize email marketing. If you are able to drive your audience to subscribe to an email list, you can directly communicate with them using newsletters and other emails. From here, you can encourage them to donate to your cause and participate in your projects.
Ensure that your emails are high quality and interesting to readers. It’s almost guaranteed that your audience is already being bombarded by marketing emails from other companies, so you need to make sure that your emails are valuable to your audience.
You can also personalize your emails to automatically address readers by the name they provided when they subscribed. This helps make them feel more acknowledged. According to Campaign Monitor, if an email has a personalized subject line, it’s 26% more likely for that email to be opened.
However, it can be challenging to get people to subscribe to your emails. Make sure that you are encouraging people to subscribe on other platforms, like social media and blog posts.
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Have you ever heard of a little thing called social media metrics? These marketing tricks help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media strategy, which is pretty important no matter the size of your business.
In a nutshell, social media metrics help you measure the success of a campaign and the overall impact your social media performance has on your business. And it measures these analytics by tracking things like engagement, sales, clicks, and overall growth.
When most people outside of marketing think of social media, they likely don’t think of strategy and statistics.
However, it’s hard to know what works for your audience without a plan, goals, and calculated measurements. Without tracking the metrics, every post is like a random shot in the dark. Any marketing without intention (unless you strike some luck) is a waste of time.
So if you’re a business using social media marketing and want to grow your account and make sales, then this post is for YOU .
Without further ado, there are three important things to consider when measuring your social media metrics.
And the best part is I’ll be taking you through all of that in this post. By the time you’re done, you’ll be able to track your analytics like a pro.
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So let’s get to it, shall we?
Social media metrics give you a birds’ eye view of your content’s performance. But what social media analytics should you measure to include any potential blind spots?
There are four significant factors to keep in mind that’ll help determine the impact your social media presence is making. These four factors will help you see what your target audience prefers and the success of your campaigns.
Whether you’re a social media marketing manager or an entrepreneur, tracking these analytics will reveal everything you need to know about the success of your efforts.
There are two different types of reach that should be measured. And if you’re wondering, “how could there be different types of reach?”, don’t worry because we’re friends now, and I’ll explain why they’re different yet equally important.
The first type is post reach which keeps track of how many people organically saw the content since it was posted. This is really helpful in seeing where you’re falling in the algorithm and if people are seeing your posts or not.
It also helps measure the engagement percentage to gauge the direct impact your content has on its targeted audience. (We’re just scratching the surface on this topic, but I’ll go into greater detail below. )
The second type is potential reach which shows how many people likely saw your post during a certain period of time. When calculating potential reach, there are three factors taken into consideration.
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This analysis helps you see how many people are mentioning and tagging your account compared to your competitors. It enables you to evaluate your brand’s visibility and relevance within your market’s niche.
These analytics help you see how effective your social engagement is at converting followers and making sales. Conversion metrics help you determine how engaging your content is and whether or not you’re targeting the right audience.
You can track conversion metrics depending on where the traffic is coming from and what type of content you’re measuring. But these analytics will significantly help you determine the effectiveness of your social media strategy.
These are the most straightforward metrics to track, but they aren’t necessarily the most reliable. Algorithms change frequently, and sometimes a killer post can just get lost. However, the more loyal your audience, the less your content will be negatively impacted by algorithm changes.
So even though these analytics are more subjective, they’re still critical to consider when determining what is working in your social media strategy and what could use improvement.
There are several engagement metrics to keep in mind that the apps will track for you. And we’ll discuss that right meow.
(Interested in growing your engagement on Pinterest? We did a study on how to organically grow your Pinterest engagement.)
Now that we discussed what you should be measuring and the importance of those metrics, let’s go over how to do it. While you may be scratching your head wondering how to keep track of these crucial analytics, sit back and relax because it’s simpler than you’d think.
Tracking several metrics on multiple social media platforms and analyzing performance can be a full-time job.
Luckily some apps will track all of that data for you and keep it stored in one single place. Social media tracking apps are simple and great for solo entrepreneurs and companies without a marketing team.
And an app like Tailwind can measure those analytics, saving you from compiling and analyzing the data yourself.
Tailwind allows you to track important analytics for both Pinterest and Instagram, but it has several other capabilities too!
Tailwind Create allows you to make custom posts from templates made by graphic designers. Hashtag Finder makes it easier than ever to find the perfect hashtags that will get your post the most traction. Smart.Bio allows you to include links to various places and tracks when each one is visited. And Tailwind Communities gives you a space to engage with people in your similar niche on Pinterest.
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Thanks to social media tracking tools, you don’t need to be a marketer to grow your accounts strategically. Marketing is easier and more accessible than ever.
Tailwind’s blog also keeps our users and readers up-to-date on social media best practices and app changes, like this post on using Pinterest analytics.
Social media performance doesn’t have to be a mystery!
As you can see, social media metrics and tracking your social media performance don’t have to be a headache.
And it’s also vital to your accounts’ growth and success.
Without tracking these metrics, every post is a missed opportunity to learn something from your target audience on what works verse what doesn’t.
While some analytics are easy to see and keep track of, such as likes and comments, an additional app like Tailwind can help keep track of those analytics plus more. Tailwind will also help break the data down into easily digestible information.
You don’t need to be a marketing guru to leverage social media and convert followers into customers.
If you’re not already a Tailwind user, you can try our forever-free plan and see if it’s worth retiring some of those rotating hats you have been juggling. Why not see if it can take a load off your plate and give you fewer things to worry about?
Now that you know what to track and how I suggest checking out our post, How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy, next!
The world is your oyster, friends.
Ciao!
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With an excess of 4.5 billion people using the internet globally, the best place to run a marketing campaign is on social media. Social media campaigns are like the fuel of your marketing efforts, and when done right, they’ll provide an explosion of interest in your brand.
However, with so many brands vying for digital attention, it’s more important than ever to be inventive with your marketing.
So, what makes a marketing campaign successful in today’s environment, and how can you build one of your own?
This article will look at 10 successful social media marketing campaign examples from globally recognized brands and why they worked. They’ll provide you with the motivation to build your own viral creative social media campaign!
There are numerous venues where you may get your brand’s distinctive message in front of your audience, ranging from Facebook and Instagram to YouTube and TikTok.
And many of these platforms have hyper-targeted marketing solutions, allowing you to reach the precise correct audience with your content and stretch your marketing budget further.
A social media campaign occurs when a company uses digital platforms to help them achieve its marketing objectives.
It works on any platform with a social networking component. As a search engine rather than a social networking platform, a Google ad, for example, would not be called a social media campaign.
On the other hand, a social media campaign would be a planned marketing effort using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Snapchat.
It’s different from regular social media material in that it’s usually created for a specific purpose and runs for a specified amount of time. It might be paid or organic, but it’s usually done with more attention and measurability than regular posts.
Content creation is a vital element in a contemporary social media marketing strategy. So, what’s the goal of your social media campaign? To connect with customers to sell a service or product, right? And the best way to do that is not only with an innovative social media campaign but also by having people share it!
So, to make that happen, you have to design a creative social media campaign that’s shareable.
Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the best methods for sharing your content. However, even though most businesses engage in some form of content marketing, only a tiny percentage can create viral material that users share.
Without this level of viral engagement, your social content can hardly fulfill its true purpose. Therefore, creating a creative social media marketing campaign is key!
So, if you’re wondering how to create rockstar social media campaigns, we’ve got you covered. We’ve put together a list of creative social media campaign examples to help get you on the road to a successful campaign and skyrocketing your brand.
Anthropologie ran this creative social media campaign on Instagram, and it was a HUGE success! Talk about a great way to create viral content and have your followers promote your brand. It’s genius!
This is a pretty awesome campaign because it ties directly into everyone’s desire for 15 minutes of fame.
Anthropologie conducted an Instagram ad encouraging people to enter an Instagram contest to win a chance to model for the company.
Users were required to use the hashtag #AnthroOpenCall to submit images of themselves wearing Anthropologie clothing.
This creative social campaign works because of its high reward and competitive element. Anthropologie provided their target population with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
In addition, they raised brand awareness by encouraging their followers to submit images of themselves wearing Anthropologie clothing on social media, exposing their brand to new shoppers.
Using your fan base to help generate content and awareness solidifies your brand story and engages your users personally, undoubtedly having them purchase more products.
Here’s an example of one excited Anthropologie customer who entered the Open Call and was chosen to walk in the fashion show!
TikTok
Prada collaborated with TikTok star Charli D’Amelio (one of the most-followed personalities on the platform with 101.8 million followers) for Milan Fashion Week in February 2020.
@charlidamelio @prada #pradafw22 ♬ original sound – charli d’amelio
They invited Charli to the fashion show and gave her a variety of outfits, all of which were Prada. Charli was asked to share videos of the event with her millions of Instagram followers in exchange. Charli filmed herself at the event dancing in her Prada costumes to popular TikTok sound bytes while tagging Prada in 6-7 different videos.
TikTok marketing is a fantastic way to advertise your company while collaborating with well-known influencers. Especially if you’re trying to raise awareness among a younger audience. And Prada pulled it off flawlessly.
Charli’s platform is well-known for her dance videos, which showcase her talent and distinct personality. So, Prada allowed her to promote the company in her unique way: through dancing videos.
Viral engagement is a very effective way for brands to reach new demographics. Working with influencers is a great way to accomplish this.
Qdoba ran this creative social media campaign on multiple platforms, including Instagram and Facebook.
Who doesn’t enjoy good queso? That’s precisely what Qdoba thought when they introduced its Queso Bliss campaign, which allowed fans to vote on which of their limited-edition quesos was the greatest.
In a series of polls, fans on Qdoba’s various social media outlets could vote on which queso was their favorite. Then, on a specified day, the winning queso would be free.
Innovative social media campaigns like this one are successful because of their capacity to engage fans across numerous media and include them in the decision-making process.
Because of these updates, fans were kept engaged and pulling for their favorite queso. In addition, users were more invested in the outcome since they were kept up to date regularly.
Contests that allow your audience to have a say in what your company does make them feel more connected to your brand. Qdoba may have simply let them pick their favorite cheese dip, but their willingness to listen undoubtedly created lifelong fans.
Multiple platforms
Customers were invited to either visit their physical site or record themselves swinging a kettlebell back and forth on camera. In addition, RYU would give to organizations that promote mental health awareness for every rep they did.
Because RYU sells athletic clothing, its target market would be active people. Therefore, they used the information they gathered about their target demographic to entice people to join their challenge.
It also aided RYU by increasing foot traffic to their physical locations and increasing social media conversations about their brand.
What’s the best part? They were attempting to raise funds for a worthy cause.
Project #ShowUS is the name of Dove’s most recent social media campaign. In this creative social media marketing campaign, Dove teamed with Getty Images, Girlgaze, and women worldwide to build a photo collection to bust beauty clichés after learning that 70% of women don’t feel represented in media and advertising.
It is a social media advertisement that promotes inclusivity, natural beauty, and a good body image.
It’s all about the personal connection on social media. You may build an authentic rapport with your target market by bonding over shared beliefs, just like Dove did.
This is a powerful strategy: 77 percent of customers prefer to buy from companies that reflect their beliefs. So don’t be scared to launch a social media marketing campaign centered on a theme related to your company’s mission or vision.
Lush reshares articles highlight consumers and share climate and eco-friendly news, which helps grow their network.
It’s easy to find thousands of gorgeous photographs that their community has created, including their employees on how products are made and used, by searching their #lushlife hashtag. However, they want to be viewed as part of a more significant movement.
This type of marketing is common among many businesses, and it’s a terrific example of how to use existing material as viral social media content.
But, surprisingly, Lush has never paid for celebrity endorsements, television commercials, or social media post boosts; their whole business has been developed through organic means.
Proof that you don’t always have to spend money on a successful social media campaign.
The campaign employs various strategies, including online and signage advertising and creating an original video shot on the company’s smartphone lineup. But, the way Apple has leveraged user-generated content on Instagram is arguably the most stunning aspect of the ad.
Unpaid contributors develop and publish user-generated content or UGC using #shotoniphone.
Customers, fans, or followers who support the company with original content such as photographs, videos, blog articles, and social media posts are considered contributors.
Users of Apple’s iPhone shared viral content promoting the smartphones and broadening Apple’s reach.
User-generated content is a terrific method to engage your target audience, use the power of social proof, and find fantastic content with little effort. When people promote you to their followers, your business will be exposed to a larger audience. But that’s not all.
When brands share user-generated content, the postings receive 28 percent greater interaction than company-created content. And ads that feature user-generated content click-through rates are higher.
Youtube
Lake Havasu, Arizona, teamed up with Matador Network, a travel media business, to create a video campaign that promotes the location as an adventure escape. Two filmmakers were sent on a journey and documented their adventures on YouTube as travel vlogs.
The campaign generated over 1.8 million impressions and aided in promoting Lake Havasu as a leading adventure destination in the American Southwest.
Video content is always an extremely engaging marketing tactic. It captures the viewer in a way that tells a story and inspires them to want more—Genius marketing strategies for travel-related businesses.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority created the hashtag #LetHawaiiHappen to encourage visitors to share their favorite travel memories. Hawaii made use of user-generated content to increase interest in visiting the state. In addition, the tourism board frequently reposts the content on its pages.
This is another example of how engaging your followers and fans to create content for you works to your advantage. UGC or user-generated content is a strategy anyone can use.
User-generated content is an awesome way to engage your target audience, leverage the power of social proof, and discover great material with minimal effort. In addition, your business will be exposed to a much broader audience if individuals promote you to their following. Truly innovative social media campaigns that work!
Innovative campaigns on social media are an excellent method to promote your business, engage your target audience, and, eventually, increase sales.
But, remember, the goal of social media campaigns is to build relationships. So here are some key strategies that should be implemented when creating an innovative social media campaign.
Been there done that marketing strategies aren’t going to WOW your followers. But, if you can come up with an innovative, creative, and out-of-the-box idea, it will captivate your fans and make them more likely to act on it and even share it.
Some of the businesses in our examples centered their campaigns around interactive in-person events. This is a great social media marketing strategy because it brings the customer to you, inspires them to capture videos or images, and ultimately share the content. Again, this is a win for you because they promote your brand, and you’ll reach a larger audience.
Another excellent strategy in social media campaigns and marketing is to connect your brand with an influencer. Again, this allows you to reach a larger audience that may have otherwise never had an interest in your brand.
The more engagement you generate with your effective social media campaigns, the better your results. It would be best if you designed a creative, eye-catching, exciting campaign with a purpose.
One essential thing that you must not forget when creating an innovative social media campaign is to use social media management tools like Tailwinds Pinterest features page and Instagram features page.
Using Tailwinds social media management tools will help you plan, schedule, and design posts. Instagram schedulers like Tailwind make planning and designing successful social media campaigns a breeze. But don’t just rely on Instagram to market your brand. Other social platforms can generate a variety of interest and more reach, ultimately allowing your brand to grow.
Focus your efforts where your target audience spends their time. Using Pinterest for marketing is a game-changer in 2022. But YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Linkedin are great platforms to reach potential customers and generate sales. Successful social media campaigns can help to skyrocket your brand and business!
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Social media ROI is simply the return on investment (ROI) from one’s social media marketing expenses and activities. Such expenses and activities might include ads, strategic campaigns, a redesign of the website, updated social media bios, etc.
The return can be in the form of revenue, brand awareness, improved customer service, customer loyalty, and much more. At an ideological level, this type of ROI is how much value you receive from the investments you make into social media marketing.
While this may seem like a simple enough concept, obtaining and demonstrating a strong social media ROI is not overly straightforward.
In fact, as of September 1, 2021, a mere 15% of social media marketers were measuring social ROI, according to a Sprout Social Index. However, anyone who incorporates these practices is likely to be several steps ahead of the competition.
To begin, it is essential to define your goals and your brand’s social media purpose. The purpose of social media is different for each company. It might even be different for each product or campaign. Some examples of a purpose are as follows:
For goals, make sure they are actionable, measurable, and realistic. Such goals should also be specific to each campaign and in coordination with establishing goals for social media ROI in general.
Do not forget that goals should also be in line with overall business goals and overall marketing goals. By defining your goals in a specific manner, it will be easier when it comes time to calculate your ROI.
To define your goals, be sure to decide what you want to get out of your campaign. Keep in mind that setting goals is not a one-size-fits-all approach. What is right for your brand may not be realistic for another. The same is true for each campaign. The following are some goals to consider:
In the end, goals should be based on measurable actions that can be monitored. This will help to demonstrate and present the value of your efforts to decision-makers.
Establish metrics to be able to calculate social media ROI. Marketing metrics are a way to track the performance and outcome of a campaign to determine its effectiveness. Before you begin tracking metrics, do not forget to benchmark your ROI for paid social media initiatives. This can be done by measuring the ROI of existing social media marketing efforts prior to launching new campaigns or tactics.
And create a specific period of time to measure, such as the first two weeks or specific dates. LinkedIn research revealed that 77% of marketing individuals measured results during the first month of any campaign despite sales cycles being longer in many instances. The way many organizations and individuals measure progress with metrics is by tracking websites and social media.
On a website, you can use Google analytics to determine social media traffic and which platforms bring in such traffic. For social media, each platform, such as Twitter and Instagram, offers an analytics tool to track interactions and engagements with your audience.
You can keep track of new followers over a specific period of time, how many people save a post, etc. Each metric gathered can help improve the effectiveness of a campaign as well as the overall marketing strategy.
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To be able to prove that social media investments are worth the time and money, it will be critical to assign a monetary value to your results. One option is to calculate the lifetime value, or the amount you earn from a customer on average. A formula is often applied to determine the potential value of each visit from a customer.
This formula is the lifetime value x the conversion rate. For example, you might take the lifetime value and multiply that by the average number of email subscribers who become customers to find the real potential value of a customer visit.
Another monetary value can be assigned as the average sale. If the goal of your campaign is to try to get sales, then you’ll want to calculate your average sale amount and set that as the value.
In this case, your destination page would have to be the page that shows up after a customer completes a purchase. When returns are achieved organically, see how much it would have cost to generate those same returns with ads. The monetary value will be the amount you save.
Another component to determine the ROI of social media is to track your investments. The type of investments will vary by campaign. This might include:
It is important that these expenses are weighted. This means that if you use social media tools all year, only include the charges from the weeks or months of the campaign’s duration. And be sure to separate paid and organic social media tracking.
Now that you have all the information and tools to figure out your social media ROI, it is time to calculate. You will need to have profit and investment per campaign at the ready. Profit is the money you earned from, the value of, etc., various social media marketing efforts.
Whereas, investment is the total cost of social media marketing efforts. The following is the social media ROI formula:
The actual calculation → (Profit-investment/investment) x100 = ROI %
And, in the end, you must be able to showcase ROI in an easily digestible report for decision-makers and team members who may not fully grasp social media ROI. You want these reports to follow a basic template.
They should use plain language void of jargon and acronyms. Include results that relate to relevant business objectives. Use KPIs to track progress in the short term. And clearly express any limitations and aspects that you can and can’t measure.
These tips can help maximize social media ROI!
And, do not forget to use the many helpful social media marketing tools that exist. Tailwind has scheduling tools, analytics, and even Tailwind Create to help you make sure your campaign is a success! Check out Tailwind’s free trial to start getting the most value possible from your social media investment!
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A social media campaign is a well-thought-out marketing strategy that uses one or more social media channels to reinforce or assist with a business goal. Campaigns differ from regular social media content because of their greater emphasis, targeting, and measurability for your business.
Think about your daily social media practices for a second. You are using your posts, Stories, Reels, and interactions to build awareness of your brand as a whole.
You use your social media platforms to promote ALL of your services or products, in hopes that they will connect with people and inspire them to reach out to you, buy from you, become a follower, and more! This is great! Because for businesses to be successful in today’s modern times, a good solid social media foundation is necessary.
But, how does a social media campaign different than your regular efforts? Great question!
A social media campaign is your go-to marketing strategy when you want to promote or advertise something very specific. For example, let’s say you have sales coming up, new product releases, a brand new book, a new training program, or even new services your company will be offering.
These are all exciting achievements, and sure! You’ll want to shout it from the rooftop, right? But, if you get on your rooftop, only a small number of people will hear it. Using a social media campaign allows you to reach out into the massive online community, whether it’s local or worldwide, to reach hundreds, thousands, or millions of people!
Remember, the phrase….”If you build it, they will come”? Well, it’s not entirely true. Sometimes you have to knock on their door, and in these modern times, that means popping into their feed by creating a social media campaign!
The critical word in that question is “strategy.” Before we can understand why it’s important, we must first understand what a strategy is.
A marketing strategy is a business’ grand plan for reaching a large number of potential customers and transforming them into paying customers.
The company’s value proposition, fundamental brand messaging, statistics on target consumer demographics, and other elements are all included in a marketing plan. In addition, the “four Ps” of marketing—product, pricing, place, and promotion—are all covered in a comprehensive marketing strategy.
Sounds fancy, right? Well, it all boils down to this. A marketing “strategy” is simply a well-thought-out plan of how you will tackle all your different channels – including social media.
And this can include your daily posts and your social media campaigns. In layman’s terms, it means that you attack social media with a “plan” versus a “willy nilly” approach. Putting thought into what you will post, what your caption says, and even what type of graphics you use all combine to create your brand.
And it’s this brand that customers and clients will either fall in love with and purchase or simply ignore. Because of this, it is essential – no, it’s crucial -that you have a social media marketing strategy.
Without a defined strategy, creating and promoting a business on social media can be counterproductive. You’ll find yourself simply posting for the sake of posting, with little rhyme or reason, and getting little to no return from your efforts.
Realize that today’s consumers are savvy, they’re smart, and they know what they like. You just have to show them that you are what they need and like!
If we haven’t convinced you yet, let’s break down exactly why you need a social media strategy and what it will do for your efforts to build your brand and create sales from social media.
At the very foundation of social media marketing strategies or blueprints lies an understanding of where you want to go as a business.
What are your objectives for the coming year? What do you want to achieve in the next ten years? All of these factors influence what is and isn’t included in your social media marketing strategy. Your social media strategy is what you plan to do to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.
Not only is social media essential, but it’s also not an option; it is mandatory. Why? Because your competition is already most likely there. If you want to see your business thrive and grow, you need to be on social media too! It is an essential part of marketing and business now.
One of the best aspects of social media is that it allows you to connect with, interact and engage with anyone. Even people who would otherwise be too timid to reach out or ask questions can and will on social media. Why? People feel comfortable behind their computer screens and phones, making them more likely to engage with brands and businesses.
Think about your local community. How many times have you driven by a business and wondered what they do or what their prices are…but you most likely never stop to check it out, right?
Direct connection with customers is possible thanks to social media. So instead of driving by -they pop into your inbox. And it is also readily monitorable, so you can see what is working and not working based on your engagement.
Having a strategy means you can break your process down into realistic, achievable steps, which will help you target your goals and your audience more effectively. In addition, a “plan of action” or strategy will create better connections with your target audience.
We’ve all been there. You know you have to post something on social media, but you don’t know what to post. So you sit and wonder, and think and struggle to come up with something. That takes time; it drains your energy and can even be frustrating.
But, when you have a social media strategy, all that goes away. It saves time since you have everything already laid out ahead of time instead of scrambling each time.
Having a strong, solid organic presence is what every business dreams of. But, it takes time and effort to get there. Creating and managing a social media strategy will make your organic presence stronger, which will ultimately help you build your brand confidence, trust, reliability, and revenue.
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So, now that you know what a social media campaign is and why you need it, we have some incredible ideas for implementing them. Creating a unique marketing strategy for your business will help you stand out from the crowd. And it’s not about sticking to one type of campaign. Mix it up! See what works and what doesn’t, monitor your results, and create a unique marketing strategy that works for you.
Here are some great ideas for your social media campaigns.
Hosting contests and giveaways on social media is an excellent way to build engagement. Here are some reasons why running social media giveaways and contests are right for you.
Another great way to reach a larger audience is to have someone (other than you) sing your praises. Creating partnerships with followers and fans means they will “shout it from the rooftops” for you. And what could be better than that? A whole community of little ambassadors telling everyone why you’re so great. Love it! Here’s how social media partnerships can help. You can also set up partnerships with other brands to share audiences!
Social media is the best place to promote it if you have an upcoming event. Why? Because everyone is on it. So, if you want to get a lot of eyeballs on your event details and people in attendance, you need to market it on social media.
P.S.If you’d like tips on using Instagram to sell event tickets, we have an expert guide ready for you.
It’s no secret that our current population wants to be entertained. That’s probably why they can never put down their phones. But, hey! That works to your advantage. Create interactive polls to engage with your followers. Here’s how you’ll benefit from them.
We all want our time and efforts to turn into a trailblazing social media campaign, but it isn’t magic. Instead, there is some effort and elbow grease needed to achieve maximum results. So, here are some sure-fire ways that will help you create a rockstar social media campaign.
Remember that whole “willy nilly” approach we mentioned earlier? Well, it’s not the best way to approach your social media marketing. And when it comes to creating a successful social media campaign that will give you a good ROI, you need a marketing plan, a strategy that includes goals. So here are a few tips to get you started.
One of the great things about creating a campaign for your social media marketing is narrowing down who gets to see your ad. Why is this important? Ads cost money, right? So, suppose you just publish a social media campaign without targeting a specific audience. In that case, consumers who aren’t interested in what you’re selling will see the ad and possibly click on it, which will cost you money. And that’s money with no ROI. So, to maximize your results, use these helpful tips.
Posts that include a picture or video perform twice as well as those that do not. And, easy-to-understand infographics or visuals are appealing to people. In addition, people are more likely to retain knowledge or information when social posts are coupled with pictures. Including links in your campaign is also an excellent method to keep your followers interested in your material and direct them back to your website.
And, make sure to pay attention to how long your posts are. Your followers may not connect with your posts if they are too long, or your text may be chopped off. Here are some tips for maximizing your social media campaigns by using the best images.
Don’t forget this vital nugget. It may be small, but it may be one of the most essential parts of your campaign. Make sure to add a clear and concise “call to action.” What does that mean? Well, simply put, it tells the consumer what to do next. Here’s how it benefits you.
Now, this tip is critical. Make sure to monitor the responses and reactions of followers. You may receive comments, likes, shares, and more. These are fabulous because it means your followers are engaged, but failing to respond or acknowledge them could harm you. So, be present, be active and engage. You’ll be glad you did!
Another fantastic idea to help build your trust, engagement, and brand following is providing incentives. Everyone loves free stuff. So, when you use different tactics like giveaways, discounts, etc., your followers will engage more. And, as a bonus, they’ll likely share your promotion with people they know, which will expand your reach. Here are some ideas on you can provide incentives.
One of the best things you can do when designing your social media strategy is to create a content calendar and posting schedule. Then, carve out some time to schedule your posts for the week or the month. We promise having dedicated time for scheduling and publishing will save a lot of time and headaches. And now, there are excellent online social media tools that can help you create your content schedule and keep you organized.
To increase the chances of creating a successful social media marketing campaign, you need a robust plan in place before you start. The first step is to set goals. Then you must determine your target audience, plan your content using a social content calendar, monitor your campaign using the appropriate tools, and track your campaign’s performance over time.
With millions of active social media users worldwide, it’s pretty clear that social media is the go-to place for any business wanting to create an online presence. Practicing these steps will ultimately help you stay focused and organized. All this helps you build a solid social media campaign.
Since most of the population has accounts on at least one of the social media platforms, it’s more important than ever for you to be there too. Whether they are online to keep up with their family and friends, checking out restaurants, or browsing for upcoming purchases, consumers are waiting to be wowed by you!
You’ll be well on your way to making a successful business social media campaign if you follow these tips. And you’ll achieve rockstar social media status in no time!
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Have you ever spent a chunk of time making content for one social media platform that turned out so good, you wanted to share it on your other accounts?
Well, luckily that’s something you can do through one simple marketing tactic: cross-posting.
What is cross-posting on social media? It’s posting the same or similar content across more than one channel.
Social media managers and strategists cross-post content to make the most of their time and resources. If you have something to say on all of your channels, why not repurpose the same picture, video, or caption on each?
And you know what the best part is? There are cross-posting apps to make it way easier than learning how to tie your shoes.
(As a mother of two children, you can trust me on that one. )
For example, Tailwind has cross-posting features which we’ll get into below.
In this article, we’ll be going over everything you need to know to be a cross-posting pro. Let’s get to it, shall we?
And psst… If you’re wondering which social apps your business should be on, we have an article that’ll blow your socks off!
Which Social Media Platforms Are Best for My Business
While cross-posting essentially allows you to repurpose content across multiple channels while keeping your accounts up-to-date, it has several additional advantages.
For example, cross-posting can increase your reach efficiency and give your business access to a broader demographic.
Curious about the pros and cons of repurposing content? The next section will break down why you should be cross-posting on social media, and how to avoid feeling spammy.
Instead of investing in several different forms of media, you can niche down (especially at the beginning of your social media journey), and produce a specific type of great content that you share on all of your profiles.
So instead of focusing on videos, blog posts, witty captions, and Lives, you can pick one thing and do it really well. This can allow you to build a strong foundation and not go overboard hiring photographers, videographers, SEO specialists, etc.
Whatever you’re best at, do that and share it everywhere!
If you’re a busy business owner or social media manager for a company, you wear lots of hats and probably don’t have a ton of time.
Cross-posting allows you to create one piece of content and then share it on several channels. This can save you from making one great piece of content and four mediocre ones.
Instead, lean into that incredible piece, and repurpose it by tweaking a few words!
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Each app has different demographics and algorithms, meaning your fantastic piece of content has a much greater chance of reaching new people if it is shared on other platforms. People generally have strong preferences for one or a couple of apps. It could be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, etc.
The more you’re on, the better chance you can reach more people.
Sharing across multiple platforms doesn’t just allow you to reach more people, but it can snowball your following much quicker.
When you are on multiple apps and provide links to your other accounts, the people who like your business will likely give your other accounts a follow.
As mentioned above, this gives you a chance to grow rapidly as each app works together to build your following.
Now that we’ve talked about the perks, are there any disadvantages?
Okay, I love a good opportunity to repurpose. But to be fair, I have to mention the potential downsides too.
While saving time and snagging some shortcuts is about all a social media manager or business owner can do in this harsh capitalistic climate, cross-posting can look redundant and lower engagement.
Redundancy can quickly lose your followers’ interest if they follow you on multiple channels. And if they’ve already seen the same content on another platform, they’re less likely to engage when they see it again.
Too much repurposing can also give your brand the feeling that it doesn’t have a unique personality.
As I mentioned earlier, each app has its own demographics and algorithm. So while one piece of content may do well on one app, it might not be as successful on another. For example, LinkedIn is best for educational content. While with Instagram, the quality of aesthetics is crucial.
You can combat that by making quality content that will be attractive on all platforms and creating and sharing unique content, so it’s not ALL repurposed.
Lastly, by giving your content a few different tweaks between platforms, you can appear less robotic and give each forum its voice and personality.
This brings us to the next section.
Each app has rules of its own, from different image sizes to character limits and algorithms. The various social media platforms have their preferred content type and typical age demographics.
For example, Tik Tik is excellent marketing for the Gen Z generation, while millennials are primarily on Instagram and Twitter.
So while cross-posting has all those perks we just talked about, there are a few other factors to consider, which we’ll get into in greater detail next!
Generally, the best time for you to post on each app is when your audience on that particular platform is most active.
So when cross-posting, it’s essential to consider what time you’re posting. The specific time you post will have a significant impact on how many people see your content or not.
Luckily Tailwind tracks these analytics for you and will automatically publish your posts during your audience’s peak engagement time.
No need to set that alarm on your phone; download Tailwind, schedule your posts, and you’re all good to go.
All the platforms have a different character limit, so each post will need to be slightly rephrased. While Facebook has an astounding 63,206 character limit, Twitter’s is only 280 characters.
As you can see, the number of words you can say vastly varies from app to app.
The best way to get around this? Write the longest caption first, then cut and tweak it for the smaller character limits!.
Not only is the character count different, but so are the image dimensions. And to further complicate things, different types of content on each app have different dimensions.
Instagram has several dimensions for different types of posts! Image dimensions are the rules that never end…(They just go on and on my frieeeend! )
Want to learn more about the image dimensions on different apps? We have blog posts on just that for Facebook image sizes, Instagram image sizes, and Pinterest Image Sizes.
Hashtags perform much differently on different apps. While one may be trending on Twitter, it could be over-saturated and outdated on Instagram.
While it can be easy to copy and paste hashtags between apps, one area that greatly benefits from some TLC is customized hashtags.
If you don’t want to spend time researching hashtags, you’re in luck because Tailwind’s Hashtag Finder does that for you!
Each app has its own way of allowing CTAs, and spoiler alert; some apps *cough* Tik Tok, make it harder than others.
For example, Tik Tok only lets you have one hyper-link if you have 1k followers, but you can’t link directly outside of the app in the videos. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to leave the app. Very suspicious.
Then Instagram allows you to post Link Stickers in your Stories, making clicks to a website or article easy peasy.
If you’d like to learn more, we have a post about Instagram Link Stickers that’ll you’ll love!
Facebook allows hyperlinked URLs in the caption, making it easier than ever for people to click a link and be transported to somewhere far, far away on the interweb.
While all apps give the same benefit of allowing you to share a link, the way of sharing it and making it accessible to your audience is slightly different.
Now that we’ve gone over the key factors to consider before cross-posting let’s go over how to pull it off seamlessly.
I mentioned this earlier, but if your posts are the same on all accounts, people who follow you on different platforms could find that spammy. And THAT could result in lowered engagement and loss of followers.
Want to use the benefit of repurposing content while not appearing spammy? Then buckle up for the best part of the ride because we’re heading there right meow.
The easiest way to cross-post without social media consuming all of your time (between constantly researching and physically posting throughout the day) is with the help of a social media management tool.
And I know JUST the one to recommend! Ever heard of an app called Tailwind?
Tailwind allows you to create your posts in the app then schedule them in one place. It also posts during your customized peak engagement window taking the research and guesswork out of posting efficiently.
Tailwind also gives customized hashtag recommendations based on your captions. And want to know one of my personal favorite perks? Tailwind allows you to see your Instagram and Pinterest feed before posting to make sure it’ll be aesthetically pleasing.
So while we’ve covered why you should be cross-posting on social media and how to do so, let’s discuss an almost as easy alternative.
Cross-promotion is similar to cross-posting; it just has a slightly different approach.
Cross-promotion on social media is sharing your content to fit each platform’s characteristics and preferences. So it’s less cut and paste.
This type of marketing generally requires more creativity to produce unique posts to promote a form of content you made. Blog posts or paid services are common forms to cross-promote on several channels.
So instead of sharing a slightly different photo and caption, cross-promotion requires different types of content about the same thing.
For example, you could have a Reel promoting a new service on Instagram, then share a longer description of your services on Facebook. Different forms of content catered to each app to promote one thing.
This type of content may involve more labor, but the results bring much more engagement and interest!
While repurposing wouldn’t be an effective social media marketing strategy, it’s a great way to make an announcement or get a lot of value out of your favorite content.
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I’m going to take a wild guess that you’re someone trying to make your dreams come true, and you realize social media plays a part in that. Whether you’re a small business owner or you’re performing research – whatever brings you here, welcome!
There’s a lot to consider regarding establishing a brand on social media, let alone multiple platforms. Maybe you’re on one platform already and wondering if adding another would be worth the hassle.
Well, in this post, we’re going to discuss why your brand should be on multiple platforms, how to successfully manage several social media accounts, and provide some tips on developing a strategy.
Let’s get to it!
Social media marketing can take your business to new heights. Maybe you already know it’s essential, but let’s break down the specific perks social media accounts give a company.
You can learn more about the benefits of social media in our blog post, What is Social Media Management. And for a more business-specific approach, check out our post on How to Use Social Media to Promote a Local Business.
While social media, in general, is beneficial to a marketing plan, each platform has its unique ability to reach new customers. This means it’s crucial to have a presence on many apps.
If you want to enter the business ownership arena in 2022, learning how to manage multiple social media accounts is a big part of experiencing success.
Next, we’re going to back it up one more time and show why you shouldn’t be on just one platform, but many.
With so many social media platforms, it can be confusing deciding which ones to utilize. Especially considering the strategy on each app is slightly different. It can feel like too much of a bother managing multiple accounts.
While it may not feel worth the effort to use multiple accounts, I put together a list of 5 reasons a company should manage multiple social media accounts instead of just one.
It’s a huge advantage to use multiple platforms to reach your audience! So if you’re converted and wondering – “how am I going to add multiple apps to my plate?” well, look no further because the next section is just for you.
While there are several social media platforms, there are also several apps that help businesses manage multiple accounts.
Having a third-party app for posting makes a huge difference and allows you to be consistent on various platforms. And some apps, like Tailwind, also give you the analytics you need to see what’s working on each channel.
Each social media management app has its perks. So how do you pick which one to use for your company? Well, it boils down to what your needs are and which social media apps you’ll be using!
Next, I will show you some perks of the Tailwind App versus other scheduling apps.
Let’s take a look at the graphic below.
When looking for scheduling and posting apps that can manage all your social in one place, many will do just that, but as you can see, not all have the same benefits as Tailwind!
With Tailwind, you can create, plan, schedule, post, analyze, strategize, connect, and grow in whole new ways! Tailwind is the only all-in-one app for your social media management needs.
Want to learn more about the best tools to manage social media accounts? We have a post on the must-have tools for small business owners where we go even deeper into this topic. You should check it out.
Now that we’ve established Tailwind can make your social media dreams come true – let’s talk strategy with posting to multiple social media apps.
You may need a strategy to see effective growth and sales through social media, but the good news is creating a good plan isn’t that complicated!
Follow these five steps, and you’ll have everything you need to build a successful strategy through the help of a social media multiple posting app!
Start reaching different demographics with multiple social media accounts! As you can see, social media management doesn’t have to be a big undertaking, especially with the help of a management app like Tailwind.
Get started with a forever free plan with Tailwind, and start saving yourself the time and hassle of managing multiple accounts today!
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