Social Media Marketing
Connecting with your customers used to be a very intrusive process. You would have to send direct mail, interrupt them with ads, and generally annoy them just to get their attention. Social media has completely changed that. Now, you have the ability to hyper-target your demographic and engage with them with just a few clicks. However, the way that you use social media personally differs from the way that you use social media as a business. There are two forms of social media that a business can use to grow their audience, leads, and most importantly, sales — organic social media and paid social media.
Using organic social media strategies for your business, you can engage customers in conversations to build trust. These engagements also keep your brand and your products/services top of mind when they decide to make a purchasing decision. In addition to starting conversations, you also have the ability to provide nearly instant customer service. Again, all of these positive interactions serve one purpose – building trust in the eyes of your customers. When you have their trust, you will have their loyalty, which is what keeps customers coming to your business and not your competitors.
Paid social media strategies are the second half of any successful social media marketing campaign. These strategies can be broken down even further into paid social advertising campaigns and paid influencer campaigns.
Paid social media marketing campaigns are advertisements that are run on a social channel such as Facebook, which allow you to hyper-target your demographic. How? Facebook, along with all of the other social channels on the internet, collects user data. They know what all of their users interests are, where they live, what their hobbies are, and more. We can use all of that data to target your exact demographic and only show them ads. This is beneficial for two reasons: it keeps your advertising budget low and increases the chances the person viewing the ad will click it.
Influencer campaigns are social media campaigns where a social influencer (someone with a large audience) is paid to promote your product or service to their audience. This strategy allows your business to connect with people who may not be aware of your product by leveraging the relationship that the influencer already has with that person.
Regardless of the type of social media strategy you are interested in, we can help. Since Facebook opened its advertising platform, we have been helping businesses of all sizes to utilize social media to grow. Want to learn how we can help your business grow with social media marketing? Contact us today for your free, no-obligation consultation.
Many people often group marketing and sales into the same category. They have the same end goal — grow revenue. However, they are vastly different. Marketing is truly about one very specific thing: telling your brand’s story.
What differentiates the cash-cow Starbucks from your local coffee shop down the road? Starbucks has perfected their story in the eyes of consumers. Successful brands have learned that people do not buy goods and services, they buy products and services that make them feel something. Those feelings are crafted by the stories the brand tells.
Content marketing is the future of marketing. This isn’t because it is the “new kid on the block” in terms of digital/inbound marketing, it’s because you are reaching people at a moment in their lives when they have given you permission to market to them.
Here’s an example of how content marketing works. Let’s say you own a dog walking business. On your website, you blog about how to best take care of your dog (feeding tips, training tips, etc). You post your blog articles on Facebook and promote/boost those posts so that other dog owners in your town can read it. That is a small scale version of content marketing. Sounds too simple to work, doesn’t it? Here’s why it does. First, by creating this content, you frame how your business is being viewed. In the example above, by creating content around the topic of caring for your dog, you show the reader (who is a local dog owner) that you care about them and their dog. You’re providing free content that is helpful to them without asking for a thing in return. Of course, on your website, you will have a call to action and your contact information prominently shown. Secondly, by creating and promoting this content, you are framing your business and yourself as the experts in the industry. You become the teacher. This elevates you to a point whereby you can gain the readers’ trust. When it comes to marketing, trust equals loyalty and loyalty equals sales.
Content marketing is more than just creating and promoting helpful, informative content. It’s a science. Our years of experience have allows us to create a content marketing “playbook” which we’ve used to bring businesses of all sized (small, medium, and large) more leads and sales. Here’s how it works…
Research/Audit: We start by examining your business, your industry, and your competitors. This allows us to better understand the content landscape in which we will be operating.
Learn Your Demographic: In order to create content that resonates with your target demographic, we research their needs, wants, and desires.
Craft Your Story: Once we have all the data, it’s time to make sense of it. Now is when analysis and creativity are blended to craft your brand’s story and uncover what content topics will be created.
Create Content: Whether it is an infographic, blog post, or video, we have the right people for the job. Our experts work within the parameters set by the research and analysis phases above to create content that exemplifies your brand and informs your demographic.
Promote Your Content: To reach your target demographic, your content must be promoted effectively. Based on our research, we will determine the best channels for promoting your content.
Measure Results: In order to rate our success and improve future campaigns, we track and measure each moment of the campaign and give you full, comprehensive reports.
If you are interested in building out a successful Content Marketing campaign, contact us today for your free, no-obligation consultation. We’ll learn more about your business to give you a step-by-step Content Marketing plan you can use to grow your online presence.
