As business owners and entrepreneurs, social media marketing can seem like a daunting task. We are always looking for ways to offer an amazing experience to our clients but with so many things already on our plate, it can be hard to figure out where to start when it comes to creating a flawless marketing strategy that will help our business shine and offer an experience that will have our customers coming back for more.

Here are 10 tips to help you craft a marketing strategy that will help you stand out from the crowd and get you started on the path to success for your marketing efforts.

1. Start with the end in mind with clear well-defined goals
It is very important to get a solid understanding of what you want to accomplish with your marketing efforts. Be SMART about your goals by setting goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely

2. Identify your Audience
This is one of the most important steps in crafting a successful marketing strategy. Your message won’t be effective if you don’t have a solid understanding of your market. Creating User Personas with specifics about demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity, location as well as income levels, education level etc can be a good starting point. You can drill down further with doing some research around their goals and values, where they get their information, their challenges, pain points and objections. This can really help shape a successful marketing campaign and guide your decisions on how best to reach your customers.

3. Select the best Platforms
Once you have a solid understanding of your market based on the extensive research conducted in the previous step, you are now ready to make well-informed decisions around which platform makes the most sense of your business needs.It may help to answer questions such as Who needs the product and services? and Where are the competitors?It can be time-consuming to manage multiple marketing channels so it is important to stick to a few that make the most sense of your business.

4. Employ a Qualified Manager
Crafting a successful marketing strategy requires strategic thinking, organizational skills and branding expertise. One of the mistakes companies frequently make is to choose the person who has the lightest schedule or the cheapest per hour rate with no regard for whether or not they are “built” for the job so it’s important to be mindful when making the selection.

5. Deliver Content Consistently
Building a successful marketing strategy and a brand requires constant effort. It is important to be consistent with your efforts to see substantial results. You can focus on writing content, curating content and listening to your customers.

6. Network and Partner with Influencers
Research from Twitter shows that 49% of consumers rely on influencers to make purchase decisions. Conduct some research around who are the experts in the product or service that you sell. The ones with a large following on social media are influencers and often open to partnerships and collaborations.

7. Grow your Audience
It’s important to nurture and grow your audience by providing them with valuable information that would help them. Social Media Marketing is not only about direct selling your product or service but more about offering something of value to your audience and building trust.

8. Engage with your Audience
You can engage with your audience in a number of ways by responding to their comments, tagging and with creating clear Calls to Action so your audience feels connected to your brand and is guided towards what to do next.

9. Measure Your Results
Since we started out with clear goals in mind, it is essential to track to results to see if you are achieving your marketing goals. This allows you to go back and constantly tweak your marketing efforts for the most optimized results

10. Lather. Rinse. Repeat
Now that you have a solid understanding of your marketing strategy and metrics, keep on learning by measuring your success and optimizing your results.