8 Savvy Social Media Marketing Strategies That Don’t Cost You A Fortune

Social media marketing requires a business to step out of its comfort zone. Over 90% of the businesses in the US use social media for marketing. What began as an entertainment platform has now evolved into a powerful and competitive marketing tool, transforming the lives of businesses and consumers alike.

But after they start running, 20% fail in the first year while 50% of the small businesses lose their edge in the fifth year. There’s more to just survival in the ultra-competitive ring: it’s more about marketing with the best strategies, even if you haven’t got a dollar on you. With a startup small enough and a budget tight, you still need to invest in social media marketing and advertising.

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What you’ll be investing is your time and knowledge, not lump sums of money. Here are a few social media marketing strategies that help you etch the mark, even if you put a coin in or not.

1. Explore The Mention Potential

A great way to start bringing authority to your site or your brand is to look out for mentions. Each platform would notify you if someone mentioned you or your brand. Wherever you find these mentions, you can do a few things, such as:

• Take a screenshot and post all across your social media, responding to the mention in the most feasible manner.
• If a website mentioned you, message the editor privately or email them to provide you a link for the mention.

Acting on these ideas will help you gain credibility for being a recognized brand. Your exposure will grow to multiple folds.

2. Create Mutual Benefit Partnerships

When you collaborate with a professional or another ‘sister’ business that complements with your services or products, you both exchange opportunities to promote each other’s services. For instance, if you run an event planning service, you will recommend your clients to go for a particular catering service, which is your business partner.

The catering service will promote content on their social media and will likewise encourage you for the clients’ advantage. Word of mouth goes a long way and customers find it easier to find related services in one place.

3. Share Your Experiences In Detail

Where you stand today is somewhat because of the lessons you learned along the way. Your experiences matter and can prove to be a source of guidance for others. Share your experience, your struggles, challenges, risks, success recipes, and tips in the form of mixed-media format.

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If you see people asking for guidance, answer their queries. If someone is asking a question related to your niche, you can provide them the accurate insight. If someone is stuck in a rut, you can help them as per your experience. In all, your engagement and valuable input will help you attract the potential audience.

4. Run Contests and referral campaigns

Audiences love contests and giveaways. You get publicity for whoever comes across your offers. Holding contests with cash prizes, your newly-launched product, or a tech gadget gives you a vital edge to attract your audience. You can also run a referral campaign or make sure fans become brand advocates on your social media.

You can also run a day-long ad campaign on your preferred social media channel, and you’ll see how people flock to your brand’s page. Just keep it all sounding professional and captivating.

5. Run Budgeted Ads

Thinking that social media ads are everything is a flawed idea, but they help gain exposure. If you’re thinking of long-term ad strategies, keep experimenting, but first, define how much you want to reserve for social media ads.

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Set your ads budget in your expense tracking software and let the device notify if you’re hitting the overspending bump. Other than that, run multiple A/B tests of an ad with varying captions, color choices, and visuals. Also, keep an eye out to where your budget is going. The lesser it’s consumed by an audience, the better. Rectify your audience pool once again and target the ones where numbers are higher, and the budget is smaller.

6. Interact with Influencers In Your Niche

Commonly, businesses spend at least $1,000 on influencer marketing. But that does not guarantee overall success. These influencers are power players on social media and can shape up the market for you.

Become friends with them. But wait. Keep the nano- and micro-influencers in view and leverage their potential to connect with a loyal audience. You can always connect with them on a personal level and help grow each other mutually.

7. Resell To The Old Customers

Often, businesses are looking to attract new prospects. They forget that one of the best ways to retain your existing social media customers is to draw them in even closer. Sure, a new audience segment might be full of surprises for you, but selling to your old customers can help you gather more significant insights into your social media marketing skills.

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Interact and engage with your audience on social media. Learn what they want from you and how you can deliver it. Sell what your customers like about you.

8. Get User Generated Content

Of all the oldest social media marketing techniques, using the audience’s experiences with your product works like a charm. For instance, if you’re a tourism service, you can showcase personal images of travel packages uploaded by your customers. Or, if you’re a luxury brand, you can ask your customers to share their photos with a branded hashtag.

Employing user-generated content allows you to build brand credibility without having to put much money or effort in. It’s a low-cost idea that helps you increase your sales and brings your fans into the limelight.

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Conclusion

If you ask us, social media is still an untapped dimension that holds massive potential. If you’re worried about not having to invest much, we hope that the social media marketing strategies listed above will help you gain your edge.

Author Bio

Emma Thomas is a content writer and a copywriter who specializes in writing marketing blogs and sales pages.  A writer by day and a reader by night, she can be often found picking cherries in summer Afternoons

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