So, your company has not fully utilized its social media. Perhaps your marketing department has decided that it is time to build a relationship with your customers on your various social media platforms. Cultivating a genuine relationship with your company’s customers can lead to lifelong loyalty, but there is only one issue, you have no idea where to begin with developing relationships.
It will take more than just posting the company website or company information across social media, especially when your customers are a niche group. If you are embarking on a social media campaign to meet those niche customers, it will take time and effort. With that task in mind, here are some tips to help reach your target demographic through social media.
Know Your Target Audience
You can create multiple social media accounts across platforms and post content consistently, but if it is not tailored for your niche group, it will not yield the desired results. Just posting content about how your product or service could benefit the group you are trying to reach won’t connect with them. A good way to start the process is to apply game theory and build a niche customer profile.
When you create the profile, you will use strategic thinking such as what problems does the customer face on a daily basis, if you were that customer how would you use your company’s product to deal with those problems, where is the customer most likely to purchase your product or contract your services, and so on. Knowing who your customers are and how they are likely to react will enable you to post relevant content. You can also ask your customers questions directly to add more data to your profile.
What Social Media Accounts do your Target Demographic Use?
Once you have built a profile of your niche customer, determine what social media accounts they are most likely to use? Are you targeting a demographic that is eighteen to twenty-five-years-old? Instagram and Snapchat are likely to be used by that age group. Is the group eighteen to thirty-five-years-old? That demographic may use Twitter and Facebook along with Instagram.
You will want to choose the social media platform or platforms that your target customers use that best fits your brand. Say your company is a law firm that deals with current issues, Twitter would be best because it allows you to tweet relevant insights to breaking news or a hashtag. If your company is a nationwide chain of florist, Instagram would make sense so your company could showcase its floral arrangements. Make sure you pick social media platforms that allow you to have the broadest reach to your customers.
Set Goals for Your Social Media Campaign
When you embark on a social media campaign to reach a niche demographic, you should have clear, measurable goals. Do you want to convert visits to your site into sales? Is the goal to build your brand? Perhaps your company wants to do both.
Whatever your goal is you should develop a decisive plan. Some companies apply the SMART (Specific goals, Measurable goals, Achievable goals, Relevant goals, Timely goals) method. What your company is saying when it uses the SMART method is that it wants to achieve something possible, that is relevant to your niche demographic and can be measured; this is done through giving customers a sense of urgency to act before it’s too late.
Types of Content
Here are some types of content you can post to help your company achieve its goals:
- Blog Posts
- Landing Pages
- eBooks
- Infographics
- Product Pictures
- Video of a product or explanation of a service.
You can schedule social media posts using an app such as Buffer so that there is content posted around the clock. Having constant posts is especially important if your target demographic is across various time zones. Scheduling content is more of an art than science, but there are a number of articles available that can help you determine what time to post. You should always post unscheduled content, something that is not product related.
By posting things that are not product or service related you prevent your niche group from feeling as if they are being spammed. Another good way to interact with target customers is to ask a question that is indirectly related to your goods or services; posting relevant news stories and commenting on them is another good way to reach customers, but politics and religion should be avoided. Make sure your content is in line with your brand and uses brand guide approved images and language. As with your company’s website make sure to use strong calls to action are used.
If you carefully develop a social media strategy to reach your customer using the above tips, you are likely to see positive results.