If you want to start a company today, you shouldn’t pay too much attention to traditional channels and methods regarding marketing. However, online marketing has long been on the advance. And that with waving flags! Social networks, in particular, offer such enormous potential that traditional marketing methods cannot keep up with them. The industry expert Eric Kaiser, founder, and CEO of the agency We like Social Media, explains how you can make full use of this strength in social media for startups.
Facebook and Co. offer a huge marketing market
Two cornerstones of marketing are advertising and increasing awareness. Social networks are ideal for both. The number of users in Germany alone speaks for itself:
- YouTube itself says that the corona crisis has brought enormous growth to the video platform. Around 47 million people in Germany look at the portal’s offers every month. There was a huge increase in educational content and tutorials.
- With around 32 million active users per month, Facebook is one of the pioneers among platforms for social exchange.
- Instagram is actively used by more than 25 million people in Germany every month.
- TikTok is still relatively young on the market and is actively used by around 5.5 million people in this country every month.
- Xing has established itself as a platform for B2B contacts; around 8 million active people are interested in the content every month.
- According to its statements, LinkedIn has more than 7 million accounts in Germany.
- Although Twitter is the veteran of social networks, it is “only” used by a little more than 2.8 million users in Germany.
Social media for startups, even with a small budget
Those who are just starting to launch an innovative company usually do not have unlimited sources of money at their disposal. Classic marketing measures and especially the traditional advertising channels such as newspaper advertisements, posters, TV spots, and radio advertising can cost – and not exactly a little. On the other hand, social media ads are available for little money and bring a lot more if they are done correctly.
- They enable you to have direct contact with and a lively exchange with your (potential) customers.
- This way, you get to know them better, and you can adapt your products/services to their real needs.
- Thanks to precise targeting, the wastage is negligible compared to conventional advertising.
These advertising costs can come your way
You can easily count on a few thousand euros for a simple advertisement in the newspaper or magazine of your target group. A radio spot has to be produced first, which can cost between 400 and 800 euros. If it is then to go on air at a national broadcaster at prime time, around 10 euros per second of the broadcast will be charged – so that the listeners (who do not all belong to your target group) can hear it exactly. Once! It gets really expensive with television.
In addition to the high production costs for a 30-second spot, there are also around € 20,000 (public broadcasters after 8 p.m.). And from around 60,000 euros, you can place such a spot in the private sector – if it is not supposed to run during a crowd such as a show or a high-level sporting event. Then the same spot can easily cost 150,000 euros and more. The situation is very different with social media ads. Twitter, for example, offers an ad with 1,000 impressions on social media for startups from as little as 6.46 US dollars. The following graphic shows you what you have to spend on average for an ad on the other social networks.
Get started now – with the best social media tips
If you want to get started now to push your young company with social media, we have a few expert tips for you that will get you started.
Tip 1: It all starts with the right strategy
First, define exactly the goals you want to achieve with your social media for startups. More sales, more leads, better branding? Then you determine your target group as precisely as possible (preferably using so-called personas).
Do you address them more as “you” or as “you”? Are there more young men than old ones, more girls than lawyers? Do you focus more on text and image content or more on videos? It depends on which social platform is right for you. And remember: Whatever you do in terms of social media, everything has to suit you, reflect your company and be consistent all around.
Tip 2: Choosing the right platform
To set up a comprehensive social media strategy, you will likely need to set up a profile across multiple platforms. Which these are in turn depends on your target group.
Tip 3: Get active regularly
Social media for startups means: Checking the account EVERY DAY to see what’s going on. Even regular postings (at least two to three times a week) are a must. It is helpful to have a relatively detailed content plan in which you record in advance which post will go out and when. Perhaps the most important tip is the interaction with users: Answer ALL questions and comments IMMEDIATELY – even those you may not like because they criticize them.
Tip 4: Talk to your users
Who likes to talk to an answering machine? Probably nobody. You cannot enter into a dialogue with it . It is very similar to brands, products, and companies. You’d much rather talk to people. Communication is the magic word in social networks – in both directions! This means that you present not only your company or your great products but also yourself, your employees – people who stand behind your brand, who are responsible for your corporate identity life! So be human with the posts, show feelings, ask questions, and ask for answers. Make yourself “human” by showing photos of yourself at work or during a lunch walk by writing your name under the posts/replies.
Tip 5: Think of the smartphone generation
What applies to web design is also a must for social media. Make sure to optimize your pages for today’s generation, who 90% of the time use their smartphone or tablet to surf the net.
Tip 6: Be you, be unique
Unique is in, personality attracts! Above all, one thing is necessary for this: creativity. This is particularly evident when creating visual content. Really good pictures and videos are almost a sure-fire success – if they are unique. That means that you should come up with something special, extraordinary, thrilling for your posts and especially for the social media ads. Stand out from the crowd, show your imagination, but never forget your branding.
Tip 7: Always give a little more than your competition
Having fun is one aspect of social media for startups – valuable information and ultimately purchase incentives are the other. In this respect, social media content works very similarly to SEO texts on the website: They only bring something if they offer users real added value, provide additional information, and reveal background knowledge. For example, you can explain the manufacturing process of your product or let a customer talk about the benefits of your service. Explain exactly how your gadget is used daily or which ingredients in the skincare cream you sell, why, and how to ensure beautiful skin.
Tip 8: Keep your eyes and ears open and react quickly
Classic advertising and long-term marketing have a very decisive disadvantage: if they run once, they are very difficult to reverse or change, usually at considerable expense. This problem does not exist with social marketing. Here you can react at lightning speed to trends that are currently emerging on the Internet. It is precisely this real-time marketing that is largely what makes social networks so attractive. In practice, this means that, for example, you could use disappointing films, a musical flop, or even unsuccessful advertising that is widely criticized on the Internet as an opportunity to turn exactly the mistakes into the opposite with a creative post.
