Social Marketing and Relationship Building

Posted on October 9, 2012 by concentreblog

Social marketing is all about building relationships. Using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube are great additions to your customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Staying social allows you to stay in touch and engage with your customers. Social marketing is all about strategy, listening and community engagement. All brands need to engage with their target audiences.

As with any marketing medium, the first step for any social strategy is to identify what your business priorities are and align them with the social tactics that your customers use. Once you’ve figured out what social communities your customers use, you need to convey warmth and sincerity in your social media content. Picture first the reader. Try to imagine the subject from the reader’s viewpoint. Use the word “you,” but don’t overdo it.

Know what your customers want. Before buying a product or service, people weigh the benefits that would come from the purchase against the hierarchy of their wants and needs. Many factors go into this decision – convenience, price, quality, speed of delivery and other variables. Knowing precisely what your customers want from you, what influences their buying decision is key to effective marketing and posting great social content that builds ongoing customer relationships.

Use the right information. You need to have the right information to use it well in your posts, tweets and videos. The right information means the right amount and level of detail. You need to ask yourself: Can I (therefore my customer) make informed decisions based upon this information?

Focus on clearly identifiable market segments. Marketing and communication today is all about me, myself and I. It’s a one-on-one conversation. What particular combination of factors will define a group with significantly different buying patterns that are relevant to your business? By focusing on the common denominators of your target groups, you can develop information specifically tailored to your customer’s need. This will allow you to zero in on information that your customers want and need.

Make an offer your prospects find hard to refuse. To succeed, an offer needs to be perceived as tangible, clear and appealing to your target market. In fact, the presentation of your offer is almost as important as your product or service in stimulating sales. Link your name with a strong customer benefit.

Clarity is important in getting people to accept your offer. You should leave no doubt in their minds about what you want them to do and how you want them to do it. They need to know exactly what they are going to get if they respond. Make it clear.

As with most of us, I find it much more fun to create amusing and witty posts. Unfortunately, the fact remains that they usually don’t work as well as clear, benefits-oriented statements.

The key to using social media is to build customer relationships, and keep interest and engagement to encourage continual customer collaboration.

Establishing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Posted on November 29, 2011 by concentreblog

You must leverage social media if you want to successfully market your business. You will reach a huge amount of customers and prospects worldwide in just a few minutes.

If you are a newbie to social media management, this new way of marketing can be overwhelming.

With the advent of social media, many new communications and content marketing channels are available. Social media creates a new environment for customer conversations. And, just about the time you get comfortable with using a few, another new social media community pops up.

Where do you start and what social networks do you focus on? Many choices are available. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are the most visited social media sites.

Using social media on a regular basis will help you gain valuable customers that are in the know, and like and trust your business. With social media, you let people know what’s going on with your business. This contact and interaction will help your company build relationships; make friends with customers and prospects. With social media, many ways are available to profile and highlight your company.

You should frequently post informative content that lets prospects get to know your company, its expertise, brand messages and offerings. By reaching out and having interaction with your social networks, you are able to touch base with hundreds of people each day.

Social media is particularly critical to reputation management, brand messaging and reaching customers. How you interact with others through social media will have a big impact on how others view your company, its products and services, and maintaining your brand identity.

The information that you put online should enhance the reputation and expertise of your company, and support your brand. You need to make sure that everything you write and put as your content elevates and guards your company reputation, including how your company looks and acts, what it says and how it says it.

Social media pages are designed for content postings that build relationships though content interaction. It is important to make sure that you balance how much marketing you do. Your social contacts will become very tired of your company, if day in and day out you do are making a hard sales pitch.

Your social media content is King. Once you commit to be social online, you must keep your content fresh and valuable to your followers and fans. Informative content will help your company stand out from your competitors online.

You need to use good content marketing with your social media efforts. Informational content generates trust. It provides prospective buyers with the information needed to nurture their interest and push them through the sales cycle. You can even figure out what they are interested in simply by looking at what content they interact with online.

When you first do your social media planning, a huge challenge is to find out what social media venues that your customers are using. After doing your research to find them, you need to analyze and find out what type of content your customers’ are interested in. Knowing their areas of interest will enable your company to become a resource in your product or service arena. You also need to think about how your company can create continuous beneficial and informative content. The key to retaining loyal customers and attracting new buyers is telling valuable, relevant and compelling stories.

You need an ongoing social media strategy and plan to make sure you will reach your goals on an ongoing basis. Social media marketing is only one part of an Internet marketing plan, but it is a very important part. Social media activities are an essential element to capture business online.