Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies. Michelle Krasniak

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Chapter 3

      Plotting Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      In Chapter 1 of this minibook, we talk about making the business case for social media marketing, looking at the question of whether you should or shouldn’t get involved. That chapter is about strategy, goals, and objectives — this one is about tactics. It helps you decide which social media services best fit your marketing objectives and your target market.

      Let your customers and prospects drive your selection of social media alternatives. To see the best return on your investment in social media, you need to try to use the same social media as they do. This principle is the same one you apply to all your other marketing and advertising efforts. Social media is a new tactic, not a new world.

      In this chapter, we show how to use online market research to assess the match between your target markets and various social media outlets. After you do that, you’re ready to start filling out your own Social Media Marketing Plan, which appears at the end of this chapter.

Locating Your Target Market Online

      Nothing is more important in marketing than identifying and understanding your target audience (or audiences). After you can describe your customers’ and prospects’ demographic characteristics, where they live, and what social media they use, you’re in a position to focus your social marketing efforts on those people most likely to buy your products or services. (Be sure to include the description of your target market in your Social Media Marketing Goals statement, discussed in Book 1, Chapter 1.)

      Because social media techniques focus on inexpensive ways to reach niche markets with specific messages, they’re tailor-made for a guerrilla-marketing approach. As with all guerrilla-marketing activities, target one market at a time.

      Don’t dilute your marketing budget or labor by trying to reach too many audiences at a time. People still need to see your message or brand name at least seven times to remember it. Trying to boost yourself to the forefront of everyone’s mind all at once is expensive.

      Don’t let setting priorities among niches paralyze you. Your choice of niches usually doesn’t matter. If you aren’t sure, go first for what seems to be the biggest market or the easiest one to reach.

Segmenting Your B2C Market

      If you have a business-to-consumer (B2C) company, you can adapt the standard tools of market segmentation, which is a technique to define various niche audiences by where they live and how they spend their time and money. The most common types of segmentation are

These categories affect not only your social media tactics but also your graphics, message, content, offers, and every other aspect of your marketing.

      Suppose that you want to sell a line of organic, herbal hair care products using social media. If you described your target market as “everyone who uses shampoo” in your Social Media Marketing Goals statement (see Book 1, Chapter 1), segment that market into different subgroups before you select appropriate social marketing techniques.

      When you’re creating subgroups, keep these concepts in mind: