Social Media Marketing Plan

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Social Media Marketing Plan
Executive Summary
With the current growth in popularity of the use of social media, investing in it is of great concern to any business that aims at increasing its customer base portfolio. This paper is a detailed marketing project plan for the Sandstone Adventure Company. It offers a guideline on how the company management will carry its social media marketing and maintain relevance in the industry. The company has four months in operations hence the need for the management to order the marketing manager to come up with a project plan report on how to expand the company customer base through social media advertisement. The marketing project will be implemented as detailed below;
Brief Overview
Sandstone Adventure is an upcoming company that specializes in offering tourism and hospitality services to both local and international tourists. A majority of the agencies in the industry provides the hard adventure to the low and average-income consumers and thus there existed a gap in the market for that individual in the high-income class who desired to experience the hard adventures. Though their price is relatively high, the services are of high quality and prestigious. They include activities such as helicopter skiing, mountain climbing, and biking. These high-end, prestigious services range from $4,500 to $20,000 per week.
Social Media Presence
Currently, the company’s social network and presence are not well established.

It maintains only one online platform that is an account on Facebook. The initiative by the management will see the company manage several active accounts on different platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter in addition to subscribing to business-related YouTube channels. The success of the company just a few months after start-up is mostly credited to personal referrals from our clients, and some adverts ran on the local television network. Our brand name is unique though some Facebook accounts imitate our company brand, features, and products. The management will request the Facebook support team to verify the account official ownership.
Though the company leaders have a significant following on Twitter and a vibrant network on LinkedIn, they do not do much to champion for the interest of Sandstone Adventure Company. The company will operate an account different from those of its staff, which will be managed by a team of social marketers. The management has selected a team of IT professionals and editors to form the social marketers.
Competitive Analysis
Our immediate rivals are those who specialize in “hard” adventures in the tourism industry and their target clients are mostly the middle-income individuals. The prices of the competitors range from $850 to $2,500, and this price offer makes them more appealing to the average income individuals. A thorough assessment indicates that they have developed a team of highly experienced staff in athletic adventure giving them a competitive advantage.
Our competitors do not have any specialization in the industry that compares to ours, which mainly concentrate on offering high-end tourism services to our customers. Because of the diversified needs and preference of the customers, it is hard to obtain the specific market portion held by our competitors.
One of the strengths of our competitors is that they have already established the brand with their customers, and the majority the customers of them are loyal. Although this is a competitive advantage on their side through aggressive marketing, Sandstone Adventure Company aim to build its new brand. However, besides their presence in the market for quite some time, they have been associated with the weakness of being too conservative in their services and are not embracing innovation in the industry to satisfy client’s needs.
Sandstone Adventure Company has a comparative advantage of ensuring that the company goals and mission do not override the consumers’ choices and preferences. Also, the competitors are less innovative, and the majority of their adverts are via print media and local television networks. Innovation in the provision of these services has enabled the company to offer differentiated products helping it shift from providing flexible packages that are associated with low risk, to hard adventures that require physical activeness with high risks but less competition. Through this market segregation, the company has reduced the level of competition giving room for expansion.
Target Market
The target market includes high-income earners and the wealthy class. These include such individuals as local and international celebrities, top business executives, and professionals in high-income categories such as lawyers. From the company’s few months of operation, the customer base has continued to expand.
As illustrated in the table below according to the percentage change
September October November December
Percentage client increase – 5% 18% 22%
SWOT Analysis
Through the SWOT analysis, the company competitive strength is in increasing client turnover and its unique and specialized services. On the other hand, the SWOT analysis has established that the company has some drawbacks including lack highly trained and experienced staff in some specialized activity such as the skiing. Also, there exist threat of insecurity due to increased terrorist incidents in some of the destination countries.
Goals
The objective of undertaking the online marketing campaign will be to create the company brand as it penetrates the market, create networks and boost the company sales. The campaign should increase the short-term sales revenue and also create enough awareness for future sales revenues. In addition to creating sales, it acts as a platform for identifying customers’ needs and trends in the market.
Strategies
The first step in achieving the objective will be to carrying out a thorough assessment of the organization’s strength and weakness with regard to the goals of the social media marketing. One of the initiatives involves restructuring the company website and linking it to the social media advertising account. The modification will also provide electronic booking services and a platform for potential consumers to inquire about the company services. Also, it will be accompanied by regularly updating its content to make sure that it precisely offers what the client wants to know and will give answers to frequently asked questions. Another strategy that the marketing manager will employ includes preparing weekly reports to observe the effectiveness of the adverts in the social media. The efficiency will be traced from the level of engagement that follows various posts.
For consistency and maintaining the brand reputation, the approval on posting should be centralized and should be strictly done by the team leader even though any member of the marketing team can draft the content. Also, the company will attract experienced online marketers to add more knowledge to the Sandstone marketing team. Also, the social media team will be adequately trained on the company products and services.
Implementation
The implementation will be as detailed below;
Facebook – as indicated by Neil, the Facebook account can be of great help in creating a business network (1). The marketing team will initiate good relation with social media celebrities and establish a working relationship with them to enable the company advert to reach as many people as possible. The marketing team will also boost the company’s advertisement effort by subscribing to paid promotions. By using various Facebook ad tools, it will make it possible to concentrate on our target group alone. As illustrated by Neil, using Facebook ads tool will not just minimize marketing expenditures, but it will also bring you closer to your potential clients (2). Also, the use of these ads too will help in setting the expected expenditure and make it easier in tracking their effectiveness.
Twitter – As cited by Christina, Twitter has close to 350 million active subscribers (1). This number makes it a suitable option for building the brand and increasing business competitiveness. Statistics, as cited by Christina, show that more than 60 percent of the marketing managers in the US expressed positive expectation in a future increase in the use of Twitter for customer base expansion. Among the method through which this will be implemented include promoting tweets and account to enable its content to reach as many individuals as possible. Also, use an engagement campaign where you pay for the advert based on the active engagement that results from a tweet (2).
LinkedIn – it will be implemented by using sponsored content and mails in addition to texts advertisement. The company will engage the service of a professional LinkedIn advertising agency to create appealing ads for the company (Linked To business sales 1).
YouTube- though the company offers its services to individuals from all over the world currently it’s more aggressive in expanding its local market share. For this reason, the company will give more priority to promoting its products along the locally popular YouTube channels.
Instagram – the Instagram platform will be used to champion the brand of the company and its commitment to offering high-quality services to its customers. Captions that attract more reviews in this platform should guide the company on the preferences of their potential customers.
Monitoring
Using an app, the marketing team will be able to obtain quantitative data such as the frequencies of online reviews, likes, shares, and comments on adverts. It will also offer insight into which is the best timing to post an advert online. From the online accounts, the marketing manager can compare the preference of the audience in viewing their adverts.
Furthermore, the marketing manager needs to identify any issues raised by the comment sections that require the attention of the management. Secondly, the use of qualitative measures in marketing is also essential to enable the team to maintain the relevance of the content that they post. These data can be obtained by keeping a record of the frequency of posts, comment, and reach based on the numbers of likes and views in addition to engagement initiated by followers. It is through this regular evaluation that one will identify the best content of the adverts. Also, it will offer the insight on how to base the advert contents either through humorous or comedy approach. This information will be shared with the market team regularly to help achieve the objective of an online marketing campaign.
Furthermore, the team will do a regular evaluation of the social media effects such as assessing the level of popularity of the account, gain or reduction in its popularity or by the number of new followers it attracts after a certain period. Some simple steps such as updating the social media profiles will be done regularly to make them always appealing.
Tracking
From the social network accounts, the customer’s queries and needs will be tracked and met to their satisfaction. To improve the level of tracking the effectiveness of the online advertising campaign, the posts will be accompanied by a link to the company website and a website card. Through this channel, the marketing manager will be able to track the effectiveness of the twitter advert for the company.
On the other hand, use of Facebook account should be aimed at increasing traffic and thus make the company website easily accessible by many active Facebook users. The company will employ various social media tools to link the online platforms. For example, a potential customer who visited your website via a link on Facebook will regularly receive more content of the company on his/her news feed.
Social media monitoring tool
Depending on the Sandstone Adventure’s needs, the most crucial aspect of the tool to be used is in measuring the key performance indicators in metric form. These metrics will help the marketing department to evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing campaign. The company will use Google Analytic, Viralheat, Salesforce, Spredfast and Sprout Social as the tool of social media monitoring. These devices are all compatible with the popular social media platforms that Sandstone holds accounts. By the use of these multiple tools, a more precise outcome is obtained that will be used in making strategies by the marketing team. These tools show metrics on the number of followers, engagements, level of competitiveness and referral traffics. In addition to above, they will offer insight on how frequent potential customers visit the official company sites.
Budget
Since the company will solely depend on online platforms to advertise their products, the overall estimated cost of online marketing will be pegged at 12 percent of the forecasted gross sales. The company predicted monthly deal is at $ 800,000. Thus the estimated marketing expenditure will be $96,000. The estimate is broken down as below.
Estimated Monthly Expenditure on particular platform Amount
LinkedIn $9000
Twitter $10000
Instagram $6700
Facebook $40,000
YouTube $18700
Monthly apps subscriptions $1200
Monthly premiums to advertising agency $10400
TOTAL $96,000

Summary and Conclusions
As indicated by Halloran, popularity in the use of the internet and social media marketing is growing each day as the majority of the big cooperate business shun away from the traditional advertising approach and embrace the use of technology (19). Online marketing has proved to be more efficient, especially when dealing with potential customers from different backgrounds. (Holland 73) Also, as illustrated by French, it bridges the geographical gap between a company and its potential clients (1). When reaching to various customers across the globe investing in the online advertisement is prudent as the tool used to enable the assessment of their effectiveness with ease (Honschild 256). Also, a contrast to traditional methods of advertising the platforms facilitate market segregation, for example, a Facebook advert only meant for the top business executive. In conclusion, there is no doubt that for the Sandstone Adventure to achieve its dreams it has to invest more in internet and online marketing.

Work cited
Christina, Newberry. “How to Use Twitter Ads: The Complete Guide for Business,” 2017 p. 1 accessed on 9th January 2018, https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-ads/French, Jeff. “Social marketing on a small budget.” Oxford Medicine Online, 2017.
Halloran, Matthew. “How to Advertise on Facebook.” The Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors, 2012, pp. 119-132.
Holland, Heinrich. “5 Online-Marketing.” Dialogmarketing, 2016, pp. 74-101.
Hornschild, Rainer. “Arbeit mit Budget: Sales and Marketing Planning.” Internationales Business Development, 2015, pp. 253-265.
Linkedin Business Sales .”How to Advertise on LinkedIn Get Started in Seven Simple Steps” 2018 p. 1-5 accessed on 9th January 2018, https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/how-to-advertise-on-linkedinNeil Patel “11 Facebook Advertising That’ll Save Time and Money”, 2017 p. 1-5 accessed on 9th January 2018, https://neilpatel.com/blog/11-facebook-advertising-tools-thatll-save-you-time-and-money/