Week 16 Part A: Developing Your Marketing Strategy

     From what I have learned and experienced, I will probably be using mainly Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to promote my business. From what I have seen, Facebook is really good at getting people to see all the details of my business. I will use it in my strategy because a Facebook page almost doubles as a Yelp page and even has reviews, but also allows you to make posts like other social media platforms. Instagram and TikTok would really give me a good chance to visually show people my products and show them the quality of the product. TikTok specifically would give me good chance to connect with my target market and answer any questions because of their feature where you can make a video based on a comment.

    I would also focus on a newsletter because it seems that it can be really effective for me. Since my business sells multiple physical products, I feel that it would be a good way to get people to see any new products or products I want to sell more of. It would also be a fantastic way to get people to see any deals and discounts my business might be having. I also like that it would help me address issues that we might be having to make sure people don't have to personally go out and contact my business.

    I would also create a blog but not right now. In the research I have done, I have seen the benefits it can have to a business's growth, however, I am only one person right now and I feel it would be difficult to manage the business and work on a blog for my business. I like blogs because you can provide useful information to others. This also allows them to get to know your business more and will cause them to trust it more.

    I would like to use social media management tools such as Zoho Social because it would help me manage both my business and my social media all for only $10 dollars a month for the standard plan. I would also use Buffer because it has many tools to help you manage your social media accounts. Since it starts at $5 a month and is geared more toward businesses with a smaller team, it would be perfect for my business.

    I have liked using Instagram the most. This is probably because I am most used to using it compared to anything else I used in this class. I was able to grasp how I would need to use it for my business rather quickly and I saw more success on Instagram than on Facebook. I also liked the newsletter because it really gave me a good chance to be creative. I also began to see the many ways I could leverage it to improve how well my business did.

    I think social media marketing would be a large part of my business. I would probably spend about 50% of my time marketing with social media. I feel that I would like to create a positive public image for my brand and it would require a good amount of time spent utilizing social media. I also feel that it would be important because it would allow me to connect with my followers and answer their questions to be really successful in gaining people's respect.