For any solopreneur, one of the biggest challenges you will likely face is marketing your business to attract more customers.
After all, let’s be honest, you didn’t go to the trouble of setting up your own business just for the chance to get down to some good old marketing. We bet that sometimes promoting your services can be your least favourite part of running your own business.
It can be pretty overwhelming, but without a strong plan for acquiring new customers your business might flounder.
So here at Team Appointedd we have put together a guide to help you get to grips with marketing, starting with… drumroll please…social media!
We are always told to get online and how great social media is, but that doesn’t actually help you know how to harness social media’s powers. It can be hard to know how to get started – particularly when you are constantly rushed off your feet and when you’ve got a million other things on your to-do list.
So, here is an easy step-by-step guide to creating the perfect content for social media that will get people flocking to your business.
1) Know your customers
Know who your customers are and what their needs are.
Look at what kind of existing customers you have: What are their characteristics? Why are they choosing your particular services? How did they find you?
Appointedd’s CRM tools can help with this. As soon as a customer books with you their details will be immediately stored, ready for you to analyse.
You could also use Facebook Insights to get to know your Facebook audience specifically. Facebook seems to know pretty much everything and you can find out a user’s age, their gender, and even their interests and hobbies.
So, once you’ve got all your data think about what defines your customers. Are there common features that you can really tailor your marketing to?
2) What do your customers need?
Adverts are pretty much everywhere nowadays and we have all got used to just ignoring most of them.
So, the answer? Create useful and visually stimulating content!
In the social media age, we can leave the hard sell in the past. So you can start marketing yourself by doing what you love, helping out your customers, and thankfully, because it’s more genuine, it is much, much easier! (Trust us!)
Once you have compiled all your data you can start thinking about what each specific group of customers need. Think about how your expert knowledge can help them, and then create content, whether it’s a quick and simple social media post or a blog that that your customer base would genuinely find really useful.
For example, if you are a photographer and receive lots of requests for family portraits, you could put together a blog on the best ways to get babies to sit still and smile for photos, perhaps with examples that you have taken.
Similarly, if you are a beautician you could share a blog on how to keep skin healthy in wild winter weather.
So all you are really doing is simply sharing your industry knowledge. Think about the common questions your clients ask you. What have you always wished your clients already knew?
It’s a way of showing off your expertise, and getting customers to trust your service. If loads of people are finding your content useful, it is going to get many more likes and shares, all helping that end goal of boosting awareness and winning more customers
You don’t even always have to write all of your own content if you don’t have time, sometimes you could simply look for what you find to be useful content online and share it with your followers.
3) Timing is everything
So you’ve got some great ideas of things you can post, but when it comes to the actual post, timing can be absolutely key. Do some research to find out when your target customers are online and post to suit them. Again Facebook Insights make this really easy and will tell you when your potential customer heads online, and even how long they stay..
And Finally…
4) Be consistent!
Be as useful as you can, all of the time. You want to build up a great reputation for yourself and your services through social media, and the consistency of your output can be key. Set a time a day, or every few days when you are going to shedule a post, this is good for customers, and it makes producing easier for you too!
For more tips download our free ‘Facebook for Business’ guide today.
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Published on 16 November 2015