2023's Social Media Marketing Strategies for Startups

For better or worse, social media is everywhere. And where the people go, so too will the businesses seeking to market to them. 

Virtually every business today has a social media presence; mostly online businesses focus only on SEO to rank higher on Google. Online businesses need to focus on social media as well, so as a startup heading into 2023, you’re already coming into an overcrowded market with a slew of competition. How are you going to get noticed and turn your social media platforms into money-making endeavors? 

Well, it’s not going to happen overnight. Social media marketing takes patience, skill, and some creativity. 

Patience and creativity aren’t things that we can teach you, but we can help you sharpen your social media marketing skills. In this article, we’re going to show you five social media strategies for startups that will help you establish your social presence. 

Top 5 Startup Social Media Strategies

1. Identify Your Campaign Goals

The first thing you have to do when planning your social media marketing strategy is identify what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s important to set a benchmark that you can gauge your progress against. 

That’s the easiest way to determine your level of success. 

However, your goals need to be SMART. That’s not just us saying that you need to put thought into them. SMART is an acronym that stands for: 

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant 

Timely

Saying, “I want to increase profits,” isn’t a SMART goal. 

“I want to use social media to drive sales and improve profits by 10% in the first quarter” is a lot better. 

2. Understand Your Audience

When running a social media marketing campaign, you need to understand your audience. Different demographic groups have various social media preferences. This dictates the content they like and even the platforms they use. 

For example, older people are more likely to be on Facebook, while a younger audience will mostly frequent TikTok and Instagram. 

Create customer profiles for your audience, segmenting it into various demographic groups. You’ll want to list information like their:

Age

Gender

Geographic location

Interests

Preferred social media platforms

Preferred content type

Occupation

Marital status

And more

Once you understand who these people are and what they want to see, you can use content creation to engage them and draw in new leads. Let’s say you’re starting a health and wellness business. You understand that your target audience cares about fitness, so you create workout routines for your different segments and post them on social media. 

This provides users with a sampling of what you offer, showing them that you deserve their time and money. But this content will only resonate if you understand who these people are and what they want. 

3. Schedule Your Posts

Now it’s time to write out your posts and schedule them to go up. You might be wondering why you can’t just post them as you go. You could do that, but scheduling them out in advance is much easier and more effective. 

Different social media platforms have different prime times for optimal engagement. If you’re posting something on both Facebook and Instagram, plopping them up simultaneously isn’t ideal. 

Facebook, for instance, sees high levels of engagement from Monday to Friday at around 3 a.m. 

Instagram has its peak times on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Using a social media tool will let you upload and optimize these posts and schedule them to post on different platforms on different days and times. This will help you cast a wider net and reach people when they’re the easiest to reach.

It’s important to put out content on social media multiple times a day. It can be challenging to generate that much original content

so many businesses get creative with this process. To save time and effort, download free vectors or stock images to use on your page, as long as they work with your brand aesthetic. 

4. Boost Selected Posts

Social media platforms make their money off of advertising revenue. While it’s possible to reach your audience through organic posting, the algorithms for these sites make it difficult. That’s why you have to run paid advertising campaigns to generate interest. 

The good thing about campaigns on Facebook Ads, for instance, is that they can be highly targeted, and you’re able to control your budget. You can select the people you want to reach, including how old they are, where they live, when you want your ads to run, and more. 

These ads are also pay-per-click, meaning that you only pay when someone takes a desired action. If you’re trying to generate brand awareness, you could pay per impression. But if you want conversions, you could set your ads to pay out when someone takes a desired action, like clicking on your ad or signing up for a webinar. 

Focusing solely on organic social media isn’t going to cut it in today’s pay-to-play environment on social. Allocate a percentage of your marketing budget to social media ads if you want to reach the right people at the right times. 

5. Monitor Results

You need to keep a careful eye on the results of your social media campaigns. Thankfully, most social platforms provide you with analytics for your business pages, like Facebook Analytics.

You can see how much engagement you received, where it all came from, and how that engagement grew or shrank over time. 

Social media campaigns aren’t a set it and forget it operation. You need to see how your posts are doing so you can double down on what’s resonating and abandon tactics that aren’t leading to anything. 

Closing

As a startup business, you’re most likely up against some serious competition. And every last bit of that competition will be waiting for you on social media platforms. 

By using these five strategies, you’ll be ready to jump into this struggle armed with the knowledge and expertise to launch meaningful and measurable campaigns like digital PR and many more.

To review, we’re recommending that you:

Identify your campaign goals before starting

Research your audience and create buyer personas

Schedule your posts for opportune times

Boost selected posts to get more attention

Monitor your results and make changes accordingly

Consistency is critical, and if you stick to these five social media strategies, you’ll be able to connect with your audience and become a welcomed part of their social media feeds.