Week 15:Your Marketing Strategy (Part 1)


 Marketing a business on Social Media has taken over traditional style marketing.  We've entered a new era of marketing!  No longer are businesses limited to competing using expensive television ads or copy ads in magazines and newspapers.  For new businesses and entrepreneurs this is good news.  Marketing using TV ads and traditional ads in magazines are costly and difficult to gage how effective they are as well as if they reached a specific target market.  With Social Media, anyone can start a business for a reasonably low cost, if any at all.  Naturally, if you decided to "promote" or place "ads" on Social Media, there is a cost, but it's fraction of what marketing costs used to be.  

For the business I chose to use for this class, I believe the most effective platforms are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  I'd like to use YouTube as well, but not as often.  Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are visual and easy to use.  They have wonderful tools to assist in reaching your target market as well as suggestions on how to improve your advertising and promotions.  They are certainly cost effective and if your content is good and you use the analytics to guide you in streamlining your audience and when to post, there's no reason for a business not to succeed. 


I would also use YouTube since it is not only visual, but right now, video content is "King".  The only reason I wouldn't use it as much as the other platforms is because it takes more time to produce a good video, so it's something that I would work on learning more about, time permitting.  I think that as I got better or rather more efficient with creating videos, I would use YouTube more, because I know there's a potentially large audience there that this business could market to.  I would post informational and fun videos of how to make cake pops and include a variety of other activities that would be fun to do with your children as well.  I would try to broaden the target market to include more men and use I would them in my videos to hopefully open up that part of the market as well.  There are a lot of dads out there that I think would love to have a cookie or cake baking activity they could do with their daughters or sons, just to mix it up a bit.  They would also learn how to make something delicious for themselves and their kids!  Maybe surprise their wives or girlfriends with a home baked cake...I know a few guys who would love to do that, so we could create video that would inspire them to do that. 


One of the most important things I've learned about marketing is that it isn't always to be selling something, but to offer people something of value; to give people something that makes them interested in what you're doing and to offer them inspiration or some ideas about how to do something they hadn't done before. I remember one of my favorite photography sites that I would often visit was not only were the photographs simply beautiful, but the photographer was always giving out instructional information on how to capture those kinds of photos.  I never felt like he was selling his photographs, but he was offering how to be a better photographer and naturally, I ended up buying his prints because not only were they fantastic, he was trying to help others to do what he does.  It created a genuine connection with his audience and that's what I think is one of the most important and often overlooked pieces of marketing is.



   

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