Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies for Startup Growth

  • Aamir Qutub
  • | CEO of Beyond Grades
  • | Updated on July 10, 2024
Learn How Startups Can Grow with Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies

Are you familiar with the brand CosMix? Let me share its fascinating story.

CosMix is a holistic health and wellness brand that effectively utilized Instagram to attract its target audience and boost sales, leading to a significant increase in their revenue.

Starting as a startup, CosMix launched with just six products in December 2019. Would you believe that in their very first year, they generated approximately INR 2 Crores in revenue?

The Problem: CosMix recognized that many people were struggling with lifestyle diseases and believed in the benefits of holistic treatment rather than over-the-counter solutions.

Solution: They shared information about how the ingredients in their products could help customers improve their overall health on their Instagram page. They also shared the success stories and how people are enjoying their products without sacrificing on taste.

So, Cosmix leveraged the power of Instagram,by:

  1. Creating visually appealing posts and stories that were informative and educational for their customers,
  2. Collaborated with influencers and encouraged user-generated content,
  3. They used strategic hashtags, engaged with interactive content, and conveyed information about their products and how they help treat health holistically, all while offering discounts on their products.

Now, imagine if brands like Cosmix, Fashion Nova, and others could reach great heights just because of social media. Then even you can leverage the power of social media, no matter how small or medium-sized startup you are, as social media today is an incredibly powerful tool when used with the proper strategy, and implementation.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” — Peter Drucker, Marketing Consultant & Author

Why is social media marketing important?

Who knew that social media would dominate the world?

None of us ever anticipated that there would be 5.04 billion social media users worldwide in January 2024, representing 62.3 percent of the total global population.

Today, the impact of social media is immense, significantly affecting everyone’s lives. We cannot overlook its influence on the American election.

Do you now understand the gravity of launching your product in front of such a large user base?

Importance of social media marketing for startups

 

Social media offers everything you need when starting your startup; it can help you in:

Creating brand awareness

Social media provides a platform to reach a wide audience, offering a powerful way to increase your brand visibility. By engaging with users and sharing valuable content, you can build authenticity and raise awareness about your brand and its offerings.

Have you ever checked Airbnb’s social media pages?

Notice how they keep their page well-organized, informing about user’s stay and their experiences and updating with all the latest discounts, thus never losing their brand identity and awareness.

Improved customer engagement

Social media provides a platform for direct communication with your audience. You can engage with customers, can respond to them personally, can address their queries and feedback, and can build honest relationships that can lead to a loyal customer base.

One of the most well-known companies when it comes to building honest customer relationships is Zappo.

Zappo is an online shoe and clothing retailer, and they are best known for their customer service.

Their representatives are known for their friendliness, helpfulness, and willingness to go above and beyond to offer the best customer satisfaction. They offer free shipping and exchange, an easy return policy, and 24/7 customer support.

Cost-effectiveness

If you compare to traditional marketing methods, social media marketing is way more cost effective.

It allows you to reach a large audience within your budget and this is why it is the best marketing option available if your startup is small or medium sized.

Targeted advertising

Social media platforms offer advanced targeting options, which are always beneficial to target your customers age, gender, interest, and geographical location.

This helps you tailor your marketing efforts to the right audience, at the right time, and at the right place.

Spotify, a Swedish audio streaming and media service provider is the best example.

Spotify targets users who frequently listen to a certain genre of music with ads for concerts or new releases in that genre.

They also create personalized playlists or recommendations based on a user’s listening history, further enhancing their targeting efforts.

Increase in website traffic and conversions

By sharing valuable and informative content and timely engaging with your audience will help you drive the traffic to your website and increase conversions.

You must have heard about Warby Parker, an eyewear company, and lenskart. Both of them use social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to showcase their stylish and affordable glasses.

They instantly engage with their audience through creative content and influencer partnerships, driving traffic to their website and increasing conversions.

Insights and analysis

Social media can give you proper insights and analysis of your customer behavior and the impact of your products and services.

You can easily track engagement, reach, and conversions, allowing you to refine your marketing strategies for better results.

Building Trust

Collaborating with influencers can increase awareness of your products and services. Influencers’ honest opinions and experiences shared with their followers will boost customer confidence, potentially leading to more purchases and triggering a chain reaction of positive engagement.

“90% trust peers on social networks (even strangers); only 15–18% trust brands.”
–Danny Brown, Award-Winning Marketer, and Author

What should you do before you start social media marketing?

Before you start social media marketing for your startup, it is important to understand:

Your Goals

Define your objectives for social media: Do you aim to boost brand recognition, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, increase sales, or achieve a combination of these goals?

Identify your target audience

It’s important to understand who your target audience is, their demographics, interest, and behavior, to create content that resonates with them that attracts them to visit your website and influences them enough to try your products and services.

Choose the right platform

Instagram, facebook and twitter are different from another and the same strategy cannot be used for every social media platform.

This is why you must select the right platform that aligns with your goals, the kind of startup and where your target audience is most active.

Create a content strategy

Work on a plan for the type of content that you would like your audience to consume about your product and services. Which platform you will hit on, how often you will be posting, the language, tone and style of the content that will resonate with your startup.

Check out the instagram page of Innocent drinks, a British-based company that produces smoothies and juice sold in supermarkets, coffee shops and various other outlets.

They post their contents based on humor. The company had tweeted incredibly relatable Daily Reminder tweets during the COVID outbreak in an attempt to keep people smiling, stay in the news, and let them know they’re not the only ones going through a lockdown, and that’s how they create awareness about their product amongst their users—based on humor!

“These days, people want to learn before they buy, and be educated instead of pitched.”

– Brian Clark

Set up your profiles

Create profiles on the platforms of your choice; ideally, you should be available on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Fill in the relevant information with proper keywords and visuals (display profile and cover photo) while creating the profile that will be visible to your customers when they reach out to your social media profiles; this will also help in winning the trust of new customers.

You can check the profiles of Sugar Cosmetics, Mailchimp, and The Ordinary—learn how they are managing their social media accounts, pay attention to the kind of content they are posting, their style, tone, and kind of language they’re using for their posts, and the way they reply to their users personally in the comment section.

Engage with your audience

Plan how you will engage with your audience, the language you will maintain in order to respond to comments and messages, and how you will build relationships with your customers.

You will also have to prepare a plan considering various situations, from complaints to trolls to when the user is asking for information.

Plan it all and go ahead with it to introduce yourself to your customers.

Monitor and Measure

Use analytics tools to track your social media performance, monitor weekly and monthly, and make adjustments accordingly to your strategy as needed.

Remember, it is all about experimenting while keeping in mind the interest and sensitivity of your customers.

Social media tips for small and medium sized startups

Once you’ve chosen the social media platforms for creating brand awareness, it’s time to start posting.

Here are a few tips to stay ahead:

Social media tips for small and medium sized startups

Prepare a content calendar

Don’t make the mistake of posting content without proper planning. Make a content calendar and it should include the type of content you’ll post (like blog posts or images), when you’ll post it, which social networks you’ll use, and any important dates or campaigns.

This way, you can save time, have a variety of content, and be more strategic with your social media efforts.

Schedule your posts

Once you’re done setting up your content calendar, you can now design your posts to remain ahead of schedule by scheduling them.

Create all your posts in one go to save time and focus on real business activity.

Schedule posts for the whole week or even a month. Additionally, you can also take advantage of automation tools like chatbots and AI for content creation, which can further reduce the time you spend on social media marketing.

Community engagement

Posting informative content is important, but to actually succeed in social media marketing, if you are a small or medium-sized startup, you must engage in community management.

This means actively building a community with your customers online by responding to comments, answering questions, and interacting with them on social media.

By engaging with your audience, you can create a network of loyal customers who feel connected to your brand.

Also, when you actively engage with your customers, it helps your posts rank better in social media algorithms, thus increasing your visibility to your audience.

Don’t jump on every meme or reel that is in trend, but it is always better to pay attention to trends on social media. This will give you a picture of what the customers are actually looking for, which will help you prepare content that is way better than others and is helpful for your customers.

Social listening is a great way to gather valuable information about what your audience wants from your business.

This helps you respond quickly to feedback and keep track of how people feel about your business.

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, plus a social media overreaction.” – Anonymous

Start selling your products or services

When you’re a small or medium-sized startup, selling products through your social media platforms is a great way. You will not only reach out to a larger audience but also be able to create a significant impact on your targeted customer segment while building credibility.

You can also work on the improvements using the insights provided by social media platforms.

Use analytics

As a budding startup you will have to closely check what works for you on social media. Analytics tools can help you track your progress and see which posts are getting the most likes, comments, shares, and clicks.

This data is valuable for planning future content!

If you find a post type that works well, try to repeat its success. If a post isn’t doing well, try new content to engage your audience better.

Analytics can also show you which social media platform is best for your business. Focus on the platforms that give you the best results.

In a nutshell,

Social media marketing is one of the most powerful tools, especially for small and medium-sized startups. It helps create brand awareness, enabling you to easily engage with customers and drive sales.

Otherwise, reaching a large audience can be extremely challenging. It typically requires significant time, money, and effort, but with social media, you can achieve these goals more affordably.

If you’re looking to build your dream startup in just five weeks, now is the perfect time to reserve your spot before it’s too late.

Aamir Qutub Aamir Qutub, the founder and CEO of Beyond Grades, has a sincere passion for innovation and startups. With over a decade of experience in entrepreneurship, he has successfully co-founded 4 technology startups and invested in dozens of other startups, focusing on real-world problems and their solutions. When not juggling with his reports and presentations, he loves to create unconventional recipes and cherish moments with his family.

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