How to Create a Basic Social Media Marketing Strategy – for Beginners

Social media has become a fact of our daily lives, serving multiple functions including socializing, networking, making money, and shopping. With its rise in popularity and functions, social media has become increasingly profitable, presenting an exciting opportunity for brands, small businesses, and many others. Social Media Marketing Strategy is important for anyone looking to establish a brand presence in the digital realm. In this step-by-step guide tailored for beginners, we'll navigate through the foundational elements of creating a basic social media marketing strategy. To complete this instruction set it should take about 20 minutes. Whether you are creating a strategy for a personal brand or a company of your choosing, these instructions will provide you the basic steps of creating a social media marketing strategy.

To follow along with this instruction set, take out a piece of paper and a pen, or open a document on your computer.

To follow along with the tutorial decide what company you want to create a Social Media Marketing Strategy for. You can select your personal brand, or any company of your choosing. 

Example: In this tutorial I will create an example Social Media Marketing plan for Taco Bell.

A target audience is the group of people who are most likely to buy your product. Target audiences are commonly defined by age, gender, income, and location. It is possible that your company has multiple target audiences, but for these instructions we are only going to be focusing on one. 

1. To determine your company’s target audience look up the company on Google & social media.  Based on the company’s ads and social media presence, who do you think buys from this company?

Example: Based on Taco Bell’s social media presence and ads, it looks like their customers are young and hip. Many of their ads include celebrities who are well known within popculture. Their ads also include many pictures of young people, and look more hip.

To define and narrow in on your target audience, answer these specific questions based on your research.

1. What age group are your customers (3-12, 13-17, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, and 65 and older)? 
2. What gender are they?
3. Where do they live (a specific city/region, urban/rural)?
4. What is their income?

Example: Taco Bell’s target audience

A persona is a fictional person used by marketers to represent their target audience. Personas help marketers identify and get more specific about their target. Personas help marketers create content that tailors to their specific audience. Companies have multiple brand personas but for the tutorial you only have to create one. In this step you can get creative! To create a Persona identify their:

1. Name: 
2. Age:
3. Income/Budget:
4. Where they live:
5. Job: 
6. Possible hobbies/interests:
7. Other lifestyle details: 

Example: Taco Bell Persona

In this step we will use the target audience and persona to help determine the company’s brand voice, which is what you will say and how you will say it. We want this brand voice to be consistent across all social media platforms. To determine your brand voice, think about your persona.

Describe your brand voice in 3 adjectives (look at this article for help with adjectives):

1. Adjective one:
2. Adjective two:
3. Adjective three:

Example: Taco Bell

To make sure the social media marketing strategy matches the marketing goals of the company, it is important to identify the company’s marketing goal. If you do not actually work for the company you are creating the marketing plan for and don’t know the company’s goals, you can select any of the possible goals to complete the tutorial or select what seems most fitting. 

Possible goals: Grow awareness of brand, increase conversion rate among customers, increase customer loyalty

Example: Taco Bell is already a well-known and popular brand, so they are looking to increase their customer loyalty. To increase customer loyalty, Taco Bell wants their customers to show enthusiasm for their products through increased engagement.

Your social media objective is the focus of your social media strategy to work towards the company’s marketing goal. To determine your social media objective, think about what would help you achieve your marketing goal. 

• If your marketing goal is to grow awareness, then your social media objective is to increase impressions (the number of people who see your social media posts).
• If your marketing goal is to increase conversion rate, then your social media objective is to increase sales from social media channels.
• If your marketing goal is to increase customer loyalty, then your social media objective is to increase customer engagement (likes/comments) with social media posts. 

Example: Taco Bell is looking to increase their customer loyalty so their social media objective is to increase customer engagement on their social media accounts. 

It is important to focus your posts on social media platforms that best fit your target audience. You do not want to waste time and money on social media platforms that will not even reach your target audience. In this step examine the age demographics of the social media platforms, comparing them to your target audience.

Example: The social media platforms that have a similar age demographic to Taco Bell is Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, because they all have a 18-29 demographic.

In this step examine the income demographics of the social media platforms, comparing them to your target audience.

Example: The social media platforms that have a similar income demographic to Taco Bell is Facebook, Youtube and Instagram, because they have the highest percentage of people in the less than $30,000 demographic.

In this step examine the income demographics of the social media platforms, comparing them to your target audience.

Example: The social media platforms that have a similar community demographic to Taco Bell is Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, because they have the highest urban demographic.

Now that you have examined the demographics and compared them to your target audience, it is time for you to select what platforms to prioritize. The platforms you choose to prioritize are where you will be posting to achieve your social media objectives. Look out your demographic comparisons and select the platforms with the most similar demographic to your brand to prioritize.

Example: Taco Bell would focus on marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. Facebook, Instagram and Youtube are most popular among Taco Bells target audience’s age, income, and community. 

Congratulations! You have successfully crafted a social media marketing strategy. Throughout this tutorial, you defined your target audience, created a persona, developed a brand voice, set social media objectives, and determined which platforms to implement your strategy on. This instruction set has provided you with the foundation of a social media marketing strategy that you can further expand upon. Should you wish to delve deeper, consider applying what you've learned to create targeted posts for the identified platforms, following the guidelines of your brand voice and objectives. Feel free to reach out with any questions or comments.