What is Your Social Media Strategy? | Branding and Marketing

Video: Strategy Marketing with Social Media — how should social media fit into your marketing program? Here are my notes & thoughts jotted down before recording the video that is linked below.

Social media is only a tactic.

Just like having a brochure, a website and a direct mail campaign are tactics, it’s just one of the ways you can get found and connect with your potential customers.

When you get down to it, there are only two kinds of marketing communication strategies: push and pull… those that you actively push out at people – your newsletter, direct mail letters, trade show exhibits, all the TV commercials and everything you can think of contacting a potential customers.

Then there is pull marketing… pull is more passive where the target market goes looking for you because they are considering your category of products and services. The idea is you are pulling them into your marketing cycle. Your website gets found in the search engine. They go to a directory of companies and type in the product or service you provide. It used to be the biggest pull marketing tools were yellow pages and Thomas register. Yellow pages for consumer and Thomas Register for b-b.

Or even more passive… when your target market individual asked their trusted friend and business colleague for a recommendation:

“Hey, do you know any dentist, doctor, attorney, place I could buy a ____, a computer guy? A Person to help with _____….” I call this the “I know a guy” type of a referral.

Social media gives you the opportunity to use both kinds of marketing: active and passive… push and pull. And it makes it easy to pass on referrals. And other than the time it takes (which can be significant if you’re not strategic) it is FREE.
Back 5, 10, 15 years ago marketers still used push and pull marketing.

Pushing out ads thorough direct mail, TV commercials, billboards, even telephone solicitation. And there was some pull thru with the use of coupons, referrals, rebates,
But often overlooked are the passive or pull ways to market your product, service or business.

One of the great things about passive marketing is that it requires fewer resources. It’s less expensive per lead, per new customer. It takes less time and effort because you do it once and it lives out there for a long time.

Some Examples: Websites, blogs, social media networks, directories.

Your potential customer finds YOU instead of you looking for them.
The trick is, you’ve got to be ready to be found. And the referrals can happen from what someone reads on line… a testimonial, a reference or even just a link from a trusted friend or an acquaintence.

It used to be having a listing in the yellow pages was good enough. Or if you were a company who provided products and services to another company… you know a business to business or b-b for short… you might use Thomas Register.

Even 5 10 15 years ago there were problems with that. Every community has their own yellow pages. In fact, a couple of years ago, just for Hudson, there were 7 yellow page books that embraced this community. At $25 a month just for a plain listing, no bold face, no display ad… well 25 x 12 x 7 is $2100, just to be listed in the Yellow Pages under the category you want to be listed under.

Now you can be listed for free on the internet. Because people don’t use the yellow pages anymore. Unless it is for a door stop or a toddler’s booster seat. And they only use the online version of Thomas register that is now called Thomas Net.

Instead most of the people use Google or other search engines to find what they want. And Google indexes the content in social media sites.

Some of my recommendations for integrating social media into your marketing program depend if you are a b-c or b-b business.
IF YOU ARE A CONSUMER FOCUSed Business:

YOUTUBE:
And YouTube is the second largest search engine… the 4th largest website and is owned by Google. You can run your commercial for free. If you have a visually appealing product or service, you can make a video and post it to YouTube. Let them host the video, you can embed it into your own website or blog and stream it in from YouTube.

Why video? Because your customer/consumer will say “I feel like I already know you and I’m ready to do business with you.”

Video makes it easy for a referral.

FACEBOOK:
It’s the fastest growing social media site by far… with the average adult in the US spending more than 20 minutes a day on it. If you’re business grows by referrals, it’s one of the easier ways for friends to let other friends know where they are eating, what product they just bought and loved, pass over a coupon or special event information

IF YOUR BUSINESS HAS A B-B FOCUS:
LINKED IN:
Getting found. Having a presence. In Q&A’s, in the status updates. Set up your Company page so people can follow your company’s activity. You’ll only get found if you have a company profile and you want to make sure it’s available when your potential customer wants to find someone like you who delivers the products and services they want and need.
Social media is only a tactic. You want to integrate it into your overall marketing strategy. Use the same branding, same name, images, and messages so that your target market becomes familiar with what you have to offer.

Video: Strategy Marketing with Social Media — how should social media fit into your marketing program?