Marketing can seem like an overwhelming prospect, especially if you’re trying to do it yourself without any outside help. Whether you’re using

social media as your main marketing vehicle or running traditional advertising campaigns, it’s important to know what you want to accomplish so that you can make sure every piece of content you create and every action your team takes will help you get there.

Step 1: Know Your Audience

Before you can create effective marketing content, you need to know who your demographic is. For example, if your business sells earrings online, your customers are female millennials ages 18–30. Knowing your audience will help you get to know what they like and dislike; it’ll also be a reference point for all of your marketing campaigns. Additionally, knowing who your customers are will help make sure that each campaign works toward a common goal: attracting more sales.

Step 2: Set General Objectives

Marketing goals are important to defining the type of content you’ll create and how you’ll use it. In order to craft the best possible marketing content, make sure you’ve determined your marketing goals first by following these three steps.

-What do I want to accomplish?

-What is my "call to action"?

-Where do I engage my audience to meet my goals?

Step 3: Create your campaigns

Creating engaging social media campaigns that lead to your desired goals is a combination of art and science. It is also a great way to reach new customers because existing customers are less likely to pay attention than brand-new leads. You can create an audience through Facebook advertising or by going viral on YouTube. Social media marketing involves these steps: Know your customer base and build appealing and engaging social media campaigns that will lead them to your goals.

TIPS:

Write Engaging Copy: The key with social media marketing is to create content that people actually want to read. Engaging with your audience on social media takes a bit of extra effort, but it’s well worth it.

Use Branded Graphics: Businesses using social media have the opportunity to engage their customers directly, it’s important that these posts are eye-catching and branded. Whenever possible, use branded graphics instead of generic ones.

Schedule in Batches: For most business owners, content creation and marketing may be outside of your particular area of expertise. Creating and scheduling 30 days of content at a time allows you to see the big picture of your campaign. Automate Follow-up Posts: Creating a series of posts that are scheduled out over time helps build anticipation for future events.

Alexis Jenssen

Founder & Creative Director