Social Media in the Real World

Social Media Examiner have just released their annual report publishing results from a survey of businesses and their use of social media

Key findings

• 59% marketers use social media for 6 hours or more per week, 33% for 11 or more hours per week
• 94% of businesses employed social media for marketing
• 83% state it is important to their business
• Top two benefits of social media marketing are increasing exposure and increasing traffic
• 65% said it was useful for gaining market intelligence
• 58%  indicated generating leads and developing loyal fans were also benefits

It was acknowledged that it takes time to develop relationships that lead to sales.  They have been using social media for 3 years and spend 11 or more hours per week on it

Small business owners with 2 or more employees were more likely to see improved sales from social media 51%

Even with minimal time investment, 83% indicated their social media efforts increased exposure for their business, particularly those who have been employing it for a year or more

56% of those investing 6-10 hours per week in social media were able to build new partnerships, particularly in B2B

61% spending 6 hours per weeksee lead generation benefits

Financial Cost

The main financial cost of social media marketing is the time it takes to gain success.  Self employed were more likely than others to see reductions in costs when using social media marketing.  However a third of mid sized and large company respondents said it had not reduced their marketing expenses.

Marketplace Insight

65% of marketers found social media helped in understanding their marketplace

B2C companies 63% of them were more likely to develop a loyal fan base through social media with B2B at 54%

Commonly used social media tools

Facebook is the top platform at 92%, closely followed by Twitter at 82% and Linked In at 73%, blogs 61% and You Tube at 57%.  Google Plus is catching up slowly at 40%.

Smaller businesses are more likely to use Linked In  and larger businesses more likely to use You Tube

Those new to social media ranked Facebook as their number one choice by a long shot, followed by Twitter and Linked In, but this stays the same for those who have been using for up to 3 years.

You Tube was cited as a key growth area for the future for many businesses, particularly larger organisations.

Businesses also aim to increase their activity generally across all the platforms

Google Plus is the least understood and a key area identified that they would like to know more about

Other Marketing Activity

The top 3 areas of other activity that marketers participated in were email, SEO and event marketing which included networking.

The main points gleaned from this report are

• Social media works significantly, but it takes time, 12 months plus and needs an investment of around 11 hours per week
• It is here to stay and is still very much a part of businesses’ future strategy
• It is taking precedent over other forms of marketing, but not replacing them

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about social media please contact me

Caroline

Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social Media and Marketing Strategy

Social media is still very much misunderstood.

Large organisations are still failing to capture the essence of what social media can achieve, so if you are a small business struggling to get to grips with it, then hopefully that fact offers some consolation

Previously I published a blog on an Introduction to Social Media, which gives an overview of how to get started.  This blog, however, addresses the principles of introducing a marketing strategy that includes social media.

I can offer training on how to set up the various accounts, but I felt it was more important to provide the context for which these platforms are relevant to your business.

Social media CANNOT be used in isolation. However, it has the potential to:

• Raise brand awareness
• Educate your audience
• Provide Information
• Position your product or service
• Build trust and break down barriers
• Drive traffic to your website
• Generate Leads
• Provide after sales care
• Keep customers loyal

Some of you may be familiar with the Sales Funnel.  There are many variations of this, but essentially it is a matrix that demonstrates the process customers go through before they make an actual purchase.

A simplistic model is

• Awareness
• Education
• Research
• Enquiry
• Engagement
• Action – purchase
• Repeat Engagement

This shows that purchase decisions are rarely impulsive, particularly in the business to business world (B2B)

So to send your prospects further down the funnel using social media requires strategic planning.

Social Media is about CONTENT.  It is about RELATIONSHIP BUILDING, fostering TRUST, and becoming the VOICE OF AUTHORITY in your field.

It has to sit within your overall marketing plan.  How do you currently generate sales?  How do you currently follow up enquiries and how long does it take to close the sale?

I ask this because what you have to recognise is that social media adds layers to this funnel and will perform at a different rate.

Whether this is faster or slower is dependent on where in the sales process the leads are when they engage with you socially.

On its own, social media reaches buyers earlier in the sales process, which means they take longer to permeate the funnel.  THIS IS WHERE WE GO WRONG because the expectation is that social media will generate instant sales.  This is apparent by the language used in tweets and on Facebook.  Some businesses are guilty of the hard sell, whereby no attempt to engage with the audience is made, nor is there any effort to educate about products, services and how they can benefit their prospects, nor any opportunity taken to demonstrate industry knowledge.

We are consumers ourselves.  Think about how you make a purchase, the process you go through. Would you be on Twitter reading tweets and respond to something that said, ‘we do great websites call us now’?  I very much doubt it.  How do you know they really are great, who are these people, do you know them, like them, trust them?  No, so why would you respond instantly to that?  You don’t.  That is the point.

There are some general tips that you need to consider when using Social Media

Four cornerstones

• Connect with your customers
• Engage through regular content – blogs, whitepapers, ebooks, photos, videos
• Reach through advertising – pay per click, or sponsored stories on Facebook, case studies and testimonials
• Influence – encourage current customers to become advocates to persuade prospects to buy

Make sure that you have strong calls to action on your platforms, particularly on Facebook.  Linked In is more about participating in discussion, Twitter is a mixture of information sharing and dialogue.

Make sure it is easy for consumers to buy from you.  Where possible use a ‘buy now’ button, and have a great landing page that captures information from clients who are warm leads.  This is relevant for your website and your social platforms.

Facebook is still a mainly business to consumer platform, with the average B2C business having twice as many Likes as B2B.  But given the great interactive nature of Facebook and its multimedia portal, it is essential for all businesses to use it to engage with their audiences.

It provides a complimentary tool to your website.  Your website is static, formal and a provider of information on what you do.  Facebook can be used to provide pre and after-sales service, share good news stories, display pictures, highlight events and so on.  Facebook is easy to customise so you can add Apps for functionality, such as Payvment which enables you to sell through Facebook, or Branch Out that makes it into a mini Linked In.  Facebook have introduced over 60 Apps with the launch of its Timeline feature so the possibilities are ever expanding.

Across all your media as said earlier, it is critical that you capture details of your prospects via an email newsletter sign up page.  This data can then be used for email campaigns that provide a mix of content that help push prospects further down the sales funnel.  E newsletters should have a mix of content that helps drive the decision making process such as answering key questions or overcoming objections

After this process has been established, those that reach this stage will then be ready to enter the more traditional sales process and you will be nearer to closing a sale.

It is not possible to cover individual strategies for each platform in this Blog.  Linked In and Twitter are quite streamlined and easy to get to grips with.  So if you are new, start with Twitter and if you are B2B get a Linked In account.  I can guide you through how to use these quite quickly

For Facebook, this is a lot more complex because it has more functionality.  Contact me for assistance if you need to develop in this area.

If you want to contact me privately or ask any questions then please visit my North West Marketing Hub.

Caroline

Why Do You Need Social Media?

Why Do You Need Social Media? 

What is social media?  Mainly Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, You Tube, Tumblr, blogsites, The list grows by the day.

So how does the small business, already struggling for time, even begin to think about adding more work to their weekly schedule?  Well, it’s free to a point, it’s effective and once you build it into your routine, it can help you really focus on your business.

Your website – no doubt you love your website.  You spent time and money perfecting it, once it went live you glowed with pride, your business had finally come to life, now let them come….. except they don’t.  This is why you need social media.

Your website, unless you are e-commerce (selling via your site) is going to be a static entity.  How many others have you seen, that once built, the content rarely changes?  You can pay for experts to boost your search engine optimisation, you can purchase Google Adwords, but refreshing content within the site is vital, as is driving traffic to your site from other sites.  It is also the best way to raise the awareness of your business online.

Sitting and waiting for the masses to find you means you will wait a long time for your business to take off and more than likely you will have given up too early.  Hopefully after reading previous blog posts, you will be actively promoting yourself through networking, events and demos.  But if this is backed up by a strong online presence as well, you and your brand will become established more quickly and also remain in the consciousness of those you wish to do business with.

As outlined earlier, it can be overwhelming and it does take time to understand how it can be used and which platform is going to be of benefit to your business.  Don’t worry, take it one step at a time.  Learn each one individually and once you have mastered it, move on to another.

Using these vehicles helps pull people into your business, signposts them to your website and also gives them an opportunity to build relationships with you.  If you need to carry out any market research, using social media is quick and inexpensive.

I am always in favour of the balanced marketing diet, blog to follow on this, so use your social media as part of your overall strategy

Please subscribe to keep up to date with all the latest marketing news

Caroline