Social media has been billed as unbeatable for its marketing potential it has also been identified as a potentially risky avenue whose use could contribute to the demise of entire brands. Its increasing popularity cannot be ignored, especially as the business takes up a more digital front.

Is social media marketing the tool to help your rand achieve growth or a potentially risky step that could permanently affect your brand? There have been so many things said about social media’s ability to help you grow your brand.

Is the platform the next big thing or just a passing fad?  The prevalence and popularity of social media, coupled with an evolution towards virtual business suggests that social media marketing could be here to stay. But is it any good?

This guide will help break down the most common misconceptions about social media marketing.

Successful Social Media Marketing Is Difficult

With the right planning and execution measures, you may be able to develop a series of social media marketing efforts that could help you increase brand awareness and growth.

You need to understand your business goals and consider how social media can help you achieve them in order to stand a chance of success.

Armed with the right information about your target audience’s preference, you may be able to make your brand appealing enough to achieve your goals. Many brands have done it before, and so can you.

There Are Too Many People Outside Your Target Market

While this is the case for social media, there are strategic paid advertisement tools that can be used to reach specific audiences.

On Facebook, for instance, you can take up remarketing strategies to advertise your brand or products to people who have already shown an interest in the past for an increased likelihood of higher conversions.

Finding your target audience involves playing to their interests. Find out what your target audience likes through polls, surveys and questionnaires, and develop your online brand profile around this.

Only the Biggest Brands Are Popular Online

There is enough love to go around on social media for brands, regardless of their size. As many as 95% of people on certain platforms follow at least one brand, which expresses a high interest in brand activity.

Brands have become so popular over time that they have surpassed celebrities, who previously racked up massive follower counts. All brands can be popular if they develop a targeting strategy and offer a range of interactive and entertaining posts.

Brands may even be popular because of the value of their customer service. On social media, size doesn’t necessarily matter.

Social Media Is Too Expensive

You cannot beat the marketing rates available through social media. Paid advertisement options are available for as low as $1, with a variety of other affordable options available on each individual platform.

You can even get instagram auto video views free to boost the performance of your content on the platform. Social media marketing is far cheaper and more efficient than traditional marketing.

It guarantees better reach, more personalized content, and additional dynamic assessment options to help evaluate the performance of marketing efforts in relation to the input.

Social media offers personal selling, which is the next step in the evolution towards a virtual business front.

My Brand Can Only Appeal to Clients Within My Area

Social media offers access to a large number of people, a lot of whom may not necessarily be physically located near you.

For certain types of businesses, this may offer a limited advantage in terms of raised customer numbers. However, people in your area who may not necessarily follow you on social media could be able to monitor this interaction and gain interest in your brand, helping you to win over potential clients indirectly.

Regardless of your type of brand, social media has the right marketing strategy for your needs. You can leverage potential walk-ins by providing sufficient contact and location information.
You may also consider virtualizing some aspects of your brand’s service provision for increased user satisfaction and potential for growth.

My Social Media Team Can Handle It

You need to develop well laid out strategic efforts to help your marketing and social media teamwork towards achieving your brand’s goals.

Your team should understand their expected social decorum in their posts and interactions, which limits the risk of fallout from a misjudged comment.

They should also engage a solution-oriented approach to follower complaints, which may work to improve user trust levels. Your social media team will be able to handle representing your brand on social media after comprehensive training efforts designed t help improve this regard.

Who Needs a Team Anyway?

You cannot handle social media activity without a dedicated unit that develops content, monitor interaction and provides to clients in a timely and professional manner.

It can be overwhelming to do this without some help. If you are considering social media activity on multiple platforms, you may completely be unable to offer these services.

So can you do it alone? If you plan to keep your operation small and minimalist on social media, you could consider setting upon one platform and detailing out your hours of operation.

If you are interested in large scale brand activity, you will need to consider a social media team for efficient operation. Just remember to provide thorough training for each brand representative.

The Free Advertising Options Are Ideal for Inexpensive Brand Growth

You will be able to advertise your brand to your followers at all times through social media. You can even schedule advertisements multiple times during the day. As long as you develop interesting advertisement content, you may be able to put out a lot of advertisements without incurring any costs.

Users will generally opt to appreciate brands that over market themselves. Your free advertising efforts could prove expensive as they may play a part in pushing followers away.  

Instead of repetitive free adverts, you could consider developing and promoting high-quality content. This could win over more followers and provide an opportunity for personal selling, which could be a much more effective way to market your brand.

Customer Relationship Management or simply CRM systems were designed to optimize business processes for interacting with already existing and potential customers.

For many entrepreneurs, this software still means something strange and unnecessary, but this technology definitely deserves more attention.

For sure, when it comes to communication and social interaction, people are irreplaceable by computers, machines, and software algorithms.

But CRM systems are not meant to replace employees in managing customer communications. In fact, their main goal is to improve relations with existing customers by means of lead management in CRM, to make potential customers willing to pay, and to increase the efficiency of employees.

About Leads

In most of the CRM systems “Leads” term means any individual – a person or contact, company or deal that might bring some new customers.

Most of them propose the user-friendly functionality of online lead management. Once your leads entered in CRM system you use, they are scored and qualified. This means that all the information like prospects, budget, level of interest, and company size – all are counted and calculated.

There are two types of leads – consumer leads and target leads. From the point of view of the CRM customer who wants to count the online promotion of his company, the “Lead” is a potential customer or consumer of the services proposed. The number of successfully created leads usually indicate the effectiveness of an advertising campaign on the Internet.

Reasons to Manage Leads

It is worth mentioning the functionality to integrate with the email services, which allows the user to conduct all the company correspondence within CRM and customize advanced automation scripts. For example, a program can send emails on behalf of a manager at a specified time or organize a group mailing according to the contacts database.

Software to manage sales leads allows marking every lead as prospective and non-prospective. When prospective – leads are converted to contacts. Sometimes when dealing with a company that generates a few leads at a time CRM owner might want to skip this boring process of leads creation and just pull some new names directly into the contact list instead. And this is also possible here.

Probably there are no best ways to manage leads as for different types of business different approaches are suitable. However, there are number of various CRM to manage leads.

How to Create and Manage Leads Online in NetHunt

Nethunt CRM for Gmail is one of the most prominent CRM systems created recently. It is widely considered to be the best software to manage leads online. In NetHunt all the data is stored in folders containing records.

These records inside the folders are entries, which CRM user creates when wants to add a new customer profile, new deal or contact. As CRM Software for leads management, NetHunt allows creating different fields in the folder settings. As soon as created, fields will be depicted on the record form. Moreover, after creation, they can be customized whenever needed.

There are also sections like Comments, Calendar events, and Files entry where all the CRM users can leave comments, create some events linked to the record (lead), and attach files from Google Drive or computer. NetHunt app for leads management also has a timeline for tracking record updates and all the emails linked to each record.

Important items on the record timeline can be pinned for all the users who have access to the folder could see that item first.

The CRM system as a customer relationship management tool is one of the best investments a business director can make to increase sales and increase customer loyalty. A dedicated businessman will hardly find something better for business growth promotion. As a matter of fact, such technological solutions have ceased to be the prerogative of solely large corporations.

The price of connecting the single employee to the majority of CRM users actually amounts to slightly more than most people spend on mobile communication services monthly.

There are several ways to write a standard business plan, but you know nowadays many people just curate something and then fix a little stuff up and down to make up a plan which would certainly backfire at the end of the day, this article here is centered on how to write a standard business plan.

This article was curated from Bplans written by Samuel Jim

1. Keep it short

Business plans should be short and concise.

The reasoning for that is twofold:

1. First, you want your business plan to be read (and no one is going to read a 100-page or even 40-page business plan).
2. Second, your business plan should be a tool you use to run and grow your business, something you continue to use and refine over time. An excessively long business plan is a huge hassle to revise—you’re almost guaranteed that your plan will be relegated to a desk drawer, never to be seen again.

2. Know your audience

Write your plan using language that your audience will understand.
For example, if your company is developing a complex scientific process, but your prospective investors aren’t scientists, avoid jargon, or acronyms that won’t be familiar.

Instead of this:
“Our patent-pending technology is a one-connection add-on to existing bCPAP setups. When attached to a bCPAP setup, our product provides non-invasive dual pressure ventilation.”

Write this:
“Our patent-pending product is a no power, easy-to-use device that replaces traditional ventilator machines used in hospitals at 1/100th the cost.”

Accommodate your investors, and keep explanations of your product simple and direct, using terms that everyone can understand. You can always use the appendix of your plan to provide the full specs if needed.

3. Don’t be intimidated

The vast majority of business owners and entrepreneurs aren’t business experts. Just like you, they’re learning as they go and don’t have degrees in business.

Writing a business plan may seem like a big hurdle, but it doesn’t have to be. You know your business—you’re the expert on it. For that reason alone, writing a business plan and then leveraging your plan for growth won’t be nearly as challenging as you think.

And you don’t have to start with the full, detailed business plan that I’m going to describe here. In fact, it can be much easier to start with a simple, one-page business plan—what we call a Lean Plan—and then come back and build a slightly longer, more detailed business plan later.

6 elements to include in a business plan

Now that we have the rules of writing a business plan out of the way, let’s dive into the elements that you’ll include in it.

The rest of this article will delve into the specifics of what you should include in your business plan, what you should skip, the critical financial projections, and links to additional resources that can help jump-start your plan.

Remember, your business plan is a tool to help you build a better business, not just a homework assignment. 

Here are the basic components of the business plan you’re going to write.

1. Executive summary

This is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally only one to two pages. Most people write it last, though.

2. Opportunity

This section answers these questions: What are you actually selling and how are you solving a problem (or “need”) for your market? Who are your target market and competition?

3. Execution

How are you going to take your opportunity and turn it into a business? This section will cover your marketing and sales plan, operations, and your milestones and metrics for success.

4. Company and management summary

Investors look for great teams in addition to great ideas. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire. You will also provide a quick overview of your legal structure, location, and history if you’re already up and running.

5. Financial plan

Your business plan isn’t complete without a financial forecast. We’ll tell you what to include in your financial plan.

6. Appendix

If you need more space for product images or additional information, use the appendix for those details.
Let’s dive into the details of each section of your business plan and focus on building one that your investors and lenders will want to read.

Executive summary

The executive summary of your business plan introduces your company, explains what you do, and lays out what you’re looking for from your readers.

Structurally, it is the first chapter of your business plan. And while it’s the first thing that people will read, I generally advise that you write it last.

Why? Because once you know the details of your business inside and out, you will be better prepared to write your executive summary. After all, this section is a summary of everything else you’re going to write about.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. In fact, it’s very common for investors to ask for only the executive summary when they are evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation, and more in-depth financials.

Because your executive summary is such a critical component of your business plan, you’ll want to make sure that it’s as clear and concise as possible. Cover the key highlights of your business, but don’t into too much detail. Ideally, your executive summary will be one to two pages at most, designed to be a quick read that sparks interest and makes your investors feel eager to hear more.

The critical components of a winning executive summary:

• One sentence business overview

At the top of the page, right under your business name, include a one-sentence overview of your business that sums up the essence of what you are doing.

This can be a tagline but is often more effective if the sentence describes what your company actually does. This is also known as your value proposition.

• Problem

In one or two sentences, summarize the problem you are solving in the market. Every business is solving a problem for its customers and filling a need in the market.

• Solution

This is your product or service. How are you addressing the problem you have identified in the market?

• Target market

Who is your target market, or your ideal customer? How many of them are there? It’s important here to be specific.

If you’re a shoe company, you aren’t targeting “everyone” just because everyone has feet. You’re most likely targeting a specific market segment such as “style-conscious men” or “runners.” This will make it much easier for you to target your marketing and sales efforts and attract the kinds of customers that are most likely to buy from you.

• Competition

How is your target market solving their problem today? Are there alternatives or substitutes in the market?
Every business has some form of competition and it’s critical to provide an overview in your executive summary.

• Company overview and team

Provide a brief overview of your team and a short explanation of why you and your team are the right people to take your idea to market.

Investors put an enormous amount of weight on the team—even more than on the idea—because even a great idea needs great execution in order to become a reality.

• Financial summary

Highlight the key aspects of your financial plan, ideally with a chart that shows your planned sales, expenses, and profitability.
If your business model (i.e., how you make money) needs additional explanation, this is where you would do it.

• Funding requirements

If you are writing a business plan to get a bank loan or because you’re asking angel investors or venture capitalists for funding, you must include the details of what you need in the executive summary.

Don’t bother to include terms of a potential investment, as that will always be negotiated later. Instead, just include a short statement indicating how much money you need to raise.

• Milestones and traction

The last key element of an executive summary that investors will want to see is the progress that you’ve made so far and future milestones that you intend to hit. If you can show that your potential customers are already interested in—or perhaps already buying—your product or service, this is great to highlight.

You can skip the executive summary (or greatly reduce it in scope) if you are writing an internal business plan that’s purely a strategic guide for your company. In that case, you can dispense with details about the management team, funding requirements, and traction, and instead treat the executive summary as an overview of the strategic direction of the company, to ensure that all team members are on the same page.

Opportunity

There are four main chapters in a business plan—opportunity, execution, company overview, and financial plan. The opportunity chapter of your business plan is where the real meat of your plan lives—it includes information about the problem that you’re solving, your solution, who you plan to sell to, and how your product or service fits into the existing competitive landscape.

You’ll also use this section of your business plan to demonstrate what sets your solution apart from others, and how you plan to expand your offerings in the future.

People who read your business plan will already know a little bit about your business because they read your executive summary. But this chapter is still hugely important because it’s where you expand on your initial overview, providing more details and answering additional questions that you won’t cover in the executive summary.

The problem and solution

Start the opportunity chapter by describing the problem that you are solving for your customers. What is the primary pain point for them? How are they solving their problems today? Maybe the existing solutions to your customer’s problem are very expensive or cumbersome. For a business with a physical location, perhaps there aren’t any existing solutions within reasonable driving distance.

Defining the problem you are solving for your customers is far and away the most critical element of your business plan and crucial for your business success. If you can’t pinpoint a problem that your potential customers have, then you might not have a viable business concept.

To ensure that you are solving a real problem for your potential customers, a great step in the business planning process is to get away from your computer and actually go out and talk to potential customers. Validate that they have the problem you assume they have, and then take the next step and pitch your potential solution to their problem. Is it a good fit for them?

Once you have described your target market’s problem, the next section of your business plan should describe your solution. Your solution is the product or service that you plan on offering to your customers. What is it and how is it offered? How exactly does it solve the problem that your customers have?

For some products and services, you might want to describe use cases or tell a story about a real user who will benefit from (and be willing to pay for) your solution.

Target market

Now that you have detailed your problem and solution in your business plan, it’s time to turn your focus toward your target market: Who are you selling to?

Depending on the type of business you are starting and the type of plan you are writing, you may not need to go into too much detail here. No matter what, you need to know who your customer is and have a rough estimate of how many of them there are. If there aren’t enough customers for your product or service, that could be a warning sign.

Market analysis and market research

If you are going to do a market analysis, start with some research. First, identify your market segments and determine how big each segment is. A market segment is a group of people (or other businesses) that you could potentially sell to.

Don’t fall into the trap, though, of defining the market as “everyone.” The classic example is a shoe company. While it would be tempting for a shoe company to say that their target market is everyone who has feet, realistically they need to target a specific segment of the market in order to be successful. Perhaps they need to target athletes or business people who need formal shoes for work, or perhaps they are targeting children and their families. Learn more about target marketing in this article.

TAM, SAM, and SOM

A good business plan will identify the target market segments and then provide some data to indicate how fast each segment is growing. When identifying target markets, a classic method is to use the TAM, SAM, and SOM breakdown to look at market sizes from a top-down approach as well as a bottom-up approach.
Here are some quick definitions:

• TAM: Your Total Available or Addressable Market (everyone you wish to reach with your product)
• SAM: Your Segmented Addressable Market or Served Available Market (the portion of TAM you will target)
• SOM: Your Share Of the Market (the subset of your SAM that you will realistically reach—particularly in the first few years of your business)

Once you have identified your key market segments, you should discuss the trends for these markets. Are they growing or shrinking? Talk about the market’s evolving needs, tastes, or other upcoming changes to the market.

Your ideal customer

When you have your target market segments defined, it’s time to define your ideal customer for each segment.
One way to talk about your ideal customer in your plan is to use your “buyer persona” or “user persona.” A buyer persona is a fictitious representation of your market—they get a name, gender, income level, likes, dislikes, and so on.

While this may seem like additional work on top of the market segmentation that you have already done, having a solid buyer persona will be an extremely useful tool to help you identify the marketing and sales tactics you’ll need to use to attract these ideal customers.

Key customers

The final section of your target market chapter should discuss key customers.
This section is really only required for enterprise (large) companies that have very few customers. Most small businesses and typical startups can skip this and move on.

But if you selling to other businesses (B2B), you may have a few key customers that are critical to the success of your business, or a handful of important customers that are trend leaders in your space. If so, use this final portion of your target market chapter to provide details about those customers and how they are important to your business’s success.

Competition

Immediately following your target market section, you should describe your competition. Who else is providing solutions to try and solve your customers’ pain points? What are your competitive advantages over the competition?
Most business plans use a “competitor matrix” to easily compare their features against their competition.

The most important thing to illustrate in this section of your business plan is how your solution is different or better than other offerings that a potential customer might consider. Investors will want to know what advantages you have over the competition and how you plan on differentiating yourself.
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make in their business plans is stating that they don’t have any competition.

The simple fact is that all businesses have competition. Competitors may not always come in the form of “direct competition,” which is when you have a competitor offering a similar solution to your offering. Often times, you may be dealing with “indirect competition,” which is when consumers solve their problem with an entirely different kind of solution.

For example, when Henry Ford was first marketing his cars, there was very little direct competition from other car manufacturers—there weren’t any other cars. Instead, Ford was competing against other modes of transportation—horses, bikes, trains, and walking. On the surface, none of these things look like real direct competition, but they were how people were to solving their transportation problems at that time.

Future products and services

All entrepreneurs have a vision of where they want to take the business in the future if they are successful.
While it’s tempting to spend a lot of time exploring future opportunities for new products and services, you shouldn’t expand too much on these ideas in your business plan.

It’s certainly useful to include a paragraph or two about potential future plans, to show investors where you are headed in the long term, but you don’t want your plan to be dominated by long-range plans that may or may not come to fruition. The focus should be on bringing your first products and services to the market.

Execution

Now that you’ve completed the opportunity chapter, you’re going to move on to the execution chapter, which includes everything about how you’re actually going to make your business work. You’ll cover your marketing and sales plans, operations, how you’ll measure success, and the key milestones that you expect to achieve.

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan section of your business plan details how you plan to reach your target market segments (also called target marketing), how you plan on selling to those target markets, what your pricing plan is, and what types of activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success.
Before you even think about writing your marketing plan, you must have your target market well-defined and have your buyer persona(s) fleshed out. Without truly understanding who you are marketing to, a marketing plan will have little value.