Social Media: Perfect Communication Channel for Startups

Social media has emerged as an integral part of our daily lives. As of April 2018, the active social media users are more than 3.3 billion. This number is staggering and qualifies to be a world in itself. When fabricating a startup, you have to go where your group of onlookers are and engage with them keeping in mind the end goal to develop your business plan. Today, the place to run advertisements is web-based platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and the sky is the limit. These social channels act as a bridge between the individuals and brands. They have turned into a vital component to increase exposure, raise brand mindfulness, create leads and boost client transformation rates. This is particularly critical for startups that are working with little spending plans, in an ever-increasing competitive entrepreneurial market. This information-driven advertising approach helps you direct your focus on individuals rapidly so they can be acquainted with the startup offerings at the click of a mouse. Social media hands over an opportunity of easy access for customers and to get a genuine feedback from its potential client in a shorter traverse of time. We can explore different avenues regarding our internet-based content to catch the essence of the offering among clients of various demographics. In order to integrate social media marketing with other communication channel and to have a competitive edge, startups ought to maximize the online presence by working on an effective social media strategy.

Stitch a plan that works for your need:

Turning to long-range social networking as a method for business advancement doesn’t just mean being available on the web. In actuality, this is a confounded procedure and, accordingly, it requires completing an exhaustive research and building an arrangement that will keep you on course. Startups have to build a strategy that fits well for their business offering. Something that works for one startup would not necessarily work for others. Identify the unique value proposition, the point of parity and disparity of the business with its competitors should be thought out before formulating a road map of implementation.

Target audience segmentation:

To construct a content for your audience, we have to distinguish their identity. Startups need to segment their potential client to get hold of the purchaser persona. By surveying your audience’s experience data such as their occupations, hobbies, interests, training, and additionally, some fundamental statistic factors such as age range, sexual orientation, and wage, could have the capacity to effectively focus on your gathering of people, convey true client experience and stitch deals.

Identify the correct social media marketing channel:

When online networking showcasing plan is figured, a startup needs to distinguish the web-based life stage they have to fabricate their presence. Every internet-based platform is one of a kind in their group of onlookers focusing on and has diverse reasons, new companies need to recognize the channel that fits their need. Focus on the channel that would contact the correct group of onlookers for your business like for B2C business, Facebook and Twitter could be the correct channel however for B2B LinkedIn could be the ideal place.

Learn about your competitors:

Before beginning with social media content creation effort, one should explore their competitors. Begin with distinguishing them by picking the organizations working in the similar space. Consider their advertising technique, content marketing strategy and customize your online presence accordingly. Additionally, keep an eye on the social media campaigns being run by the competitors and work on formulating a marketing strategy to counter the competition.

Knowledge about the end goal:

Make a long-haul objective to be accomplished through social media marketing to accomplish exceptional yield on investment of your time and money. For some producing Facebook likes or Twitter retweets and followers could be the objective yet for others, their frameworks would be centered around creating more prominent activity volume, web referrals, exceptional client target and high conversion rates. Conceptualize about the objective and plan of your road ahead customized to achieve the final goal.

Focus on content creation:

Content is the core of social media advertising. The more engaging and slanting substance one can make, more would be the traffic volume. Substance ought to be influenced creative to connect with the gathering of people to make the buzz about the contributions and to influence them to share content over various profiles. Additionally, content should be in sync with the motto of the startup and should highlight the unique selling proposition about the offerings. They should make utilization of the most recent happenings and inclining points and draw in the crowd by associating the substance with it.

Real-time feedback tracking:

The most ideal approach to benefit as much as possible from your web-based presence is to gather moment criticism by checking your clients’ exchanges. Along these lines, you will have the capacity to discover how your intended interest group feels about your product and utilize the opinions valuable to enhance your approach. In particular, internet-based life enables you to furnish your customers with the continuous service and immediate feedback. On the other hand, you can likewise screen the audience’s feelings about your latest released product and recognize any potential client encounter issues and settle them on time.

Happy Marketing!

Author: Kumar Shreesh

PGPM, Class of 2019, Great Lakes, Gurgaon

Analytics v/s Content in Marketing

Stephen Covey in his highly acclaimed book wrote the following,

“But shortly after World War I the basic view of success shifted from the character ethic to what we might call the personality ethic. Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviours, skills and techniques, which lubricate the processes of human interaction.”

To a great extent, marketing is also fighting a similar character v/s personality syndrome; of course, in its own flavour. For example, the founder of Stayzilla stated the following during the time of its closure, “During the last three to four years, though, I can honestly state that somewhere I lost my path. I started treasuring GMV, room-nights and other ‘vanity’ metrics instead of the fundamentals of cash flow and working capital.”

He further adds, “In one of my digital marketing campaigns, I got the chance to work with a renowned CMO directly. In one conversation, he stated that nowadays there’s a lot of fuss around analytics. It seems that analytics tend to drive everything but in reality, it’s the other way round. Analytics provide you with the insights of your campaigns and give you more intuitive understanding of SWOT elements of your marketing campaigns. But if you are first deciding the metrics and then, deciding the rest, you are playing a very risky business.”

In recent job description of marketing, you will easily find responsibilities parts as:

  • Drive online traffic
  • Track conversion rates
  • Utilise range of techniques like paid search, SEO and PPC
  • Social media strategy

In only one JD of digital marketing, have I found the following words:

  • Content development
  • Email marketing
  • Excellent writing abilities
  • Creative/consultative slide ware/content creation
  • Creativity, passion to innovate

The point I am trying to make is that marketing is a creative work. When a prospect visits your website, he/she will only become hooked when he/she comes across remarkable things, which in turn is driven by content. If your content has high engagement potential, metrics such as bounce rate, time spent on a webpage will definitely be rewarded. Take, for example, YouTube viral videos. Kevin Alloca in his TED talk mentioned that a viral video comprises humorous and surprising elements with a point to get across to its audience. Can we see any analytics-based approach? It’s pure human emotions that are defining such viral videos’ success, not Google analytics or super computer algorithm. Yes, such insights will help you in deciding what to publish on YouTube to make it more productive. But again, it will be content that will decide the success of the upcoming video.

In conclusion, I would like to end with the following quote by Seth Godin,

“Content marketing is the only marketing left “.

 

Author: Rupam Lathwal

PGPM Class of 2017, Great Lakes, Gurgaon