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Whatever may be your business, if you want to achieve success then you need social media marketing. Virtually your entire target audience would be using social media platforms. SMM or Social media marketing allows you to connect to your target audience. This is an extremely effective way of promoting your business and maximizing results.
Small businesses and new ventures may not have a big budget to run a grand marketing campaign. Social media is apt for them. You can run a successful social media marketing campaign on a low budget. We tell you how you can do it effectively by sharing some useful low-budget SMM guidelines.
Running a low-budget social media marketing campaign
1) Save time and money by focusing on your target audience
A big mistake companies make is to run general marketing campaigns. This would target a global audience and in the process, you may not reach whom you want to reach. Also, the expenses would be very high. The solution to this is to focus on your target audience. To do this, you need to first define your target audience.
Decide whom you are targeting. Their age group, gender, education, income profile, etc. Then, choose the social media platform depending on the audience (e.g.: Insta for millennials, FB for older people, and LinkedIn for executives). Once you know your target audience, you can then run a campaign focusing on them. This will help you reduce costs and get better results.
2) Have a unique proposition to offer
There are so many marketers on social media. A user would be bombarded by messages from so many companies. Why would they look at your message? To score above your competition, you need to have a UVP or Unique Value Proposition. The UVP is something unique that you are offering that others are not. You need to highlight what value you are offering through your campaign.
When your campaign focuses on a unique proposition, it will resonate well with your customers. It would attract them to your post and make them want to know more. The chances of them clicking on your post or engaging with you increase exponentially.
3) Avoid ads initially
Most people believe that social media marketing means ads. This is not necessary. You can do marketing without ads. The reason is if you start with ads, the platform will assume you are a paying brand. The chances of getting organic shares and engagement can reduce. Even users will perceive you as a brand that does ads. Some users don’t like ads and you may not be able to reach them.
Start by trying organic marketing. Share posts and get people to share them. Engage with people who respond to your posts. This will help you establish yourself. You can then try using ads.
4) Focus on content
It is an adage that content is king. This is true even today. All the graphics and colors you use do not matter. What matters is the core or content of your post. Focus on offering quality content that adds value to readers. The content you share should make people want to read it. It is content that consistently goes viral and provides value or tells a story! Using multiple images in one post on platforms like Lemon8 or Instagram, you can teach someone something new or tell a gripping story. You may also need to learn about the algorithm of the social media platform (check this lemon8 guide to know about its algorithm) in order to find out how to incorporate content and keywords to get better reach. Some algorithms promote your post further if it receives more SAVES. Therefore you can nudge your viewers to SAVE your post so that they can access it later and you can get to increase the post’s footfall. This might be the best way to improve engagement and hardly costs anything. Some guidelines to keep in mind while creating content are:
- The content must be authentic and original. Never copy stuff from other websites. Users are smart and will downgrade you.
- Plagiarism will also cause you problems with the platform and Google downgrading you. So, focus on creating original content.
- The content must have something of value to users. Don’t focus only on a pure marketing message. Instead, offer something that is useful to your target audience. In between this content, slip in your promotional message subtly.
- Your content must be expressed in simple language keeping in mind the needs of your target audience. The idea is that the content must be easily understandable and must impress users.
- Use different kinds of content. Text content through blogs and articles works. Today video content is also popular, so create both short and long videos. Use infographics to take advantage of the impact of visuals.
5) Work with micro-influencers
Influencer marketing can be expensive. Avoid the big names as they would charge a stiff amount. Instead, focus on micro and nano influencers whose target audience is the same as yours. Since they are at the initial stage, their expenses would be affordable. They would be more willing to work closely with you.
Work with influencers and use them to promote your message to their audience. Smaller influencers would have followers who trust them. So, when they promote your brand it will help you better. Take care to ensure that the influencer’s values and your brand value resonate and don’t clash.
6) Use CTAs
CTA or Call to action is vital for social media marketing. Every post should have a call to action placed at a strategic location. The CTA should be worded in such a way that it motivates the reader to take some action. The action could be visiting your website, engaging with you, or making a purchase. Your CTA must be persuasive and also create a sense of urgency.
7) Track performance
It is not enough to run a social media marketing campaign. You need to track how it is doing. Thankfully, social media offers many tools for this. The platform you use would have its own tools. There are also many free tools in the market you can use. Your objective should be to find out how well your campaign is working. Are you able to reach your target audience? Are you getting the responses you wanted?
Has engagement helped in conversions? Are you able to improve sales? Use the performance data to answer these questions. When you track performance, you will be able to understand how well you are doing. You can also understand the shortfalls of your campaign. This will help you fine-tune your campaign, so you can do better next time.
