If Your Business Isn’t Using Social Media You’re Missing Sales
If you aren’t promoting on social media – your business will suffer
Social media isn’t known for its sales. However, it still plays a prominent role in the digital sales process that many startups can actively utilise to increase revenue. The use of social media is demonstrated by some important statistics:
- 90% of young adults (18 to 29 years-old) have at least one social media profile.
- The average person spends a quarter of their internet time on a social media platform.
- Consumers say social media is as much of an influence on their purchasing decisions as television.
- 33% of millennials prefer to use social media to communicate with brands than other platforms.
- 74% of salespeople who beat their quota in 2014 used social media extensively in their campaigns.
Social media doesn’t just impact direct sales. It can help your site to be found on Google, increase inbound links and generate leads when social media users sign up to your mailing list.
Difference In Platforms
Of course, it is important to ensure you are on the right platform for your audience. Certain audiences prefer to interact on different platforms; for instance, younger audiences prefer SnapChat and Twitter, while older audiences prefer Google+ and Facebook.
However, despite this, there are certain social media platforms where brands are not well received by users, an obvious one is SnapChat.
So, if you want your business to start using social media, you need to be sure to focus your efforts in the right place.
How To Get Started With Social Media
If you haven’t started with social media yet, then you are already behind many of your competitors. Research has shown at least 81% of small and medium businesses use social media, but that doesn’t mean they are all being effective.
Typical reasons for failing to get results from social media are not knowing the best metrics to use or how to create an effective strategy. In fact, 55% of small businesses struggle to develop their social media strategy.
So here is a quick guide on how your business can start using social media.
- Choose the social media platforms you want to use. You can choose as many or as few as you think are valuable for your business. These should be platforms that can present your business in a positive light.
- Get on the social media platforms and start interacting as an individual. Start building a network of contacts and interact with them. Remember to promote your knowledge and expertise rather than your products actively. If you come across as too salesy, then people won’t want to interact with you.
This will help you to discover the norms and socially acceptable values of the social media platforms you’ve chosen.
- Connect with social media users who are like your current clients. This can easily be done by looking for keywords your clients use.
- Share, comment and communicate with your potential clients on social media. There is nothing more important than appearing to be sociable with your contacts. If you only share content about your business, then you aren’t going to get the response you wanted.
- Choose metrics and measure them. There is a debate on what metrics are important for social media. However, as a basis, use these statistics to engage how successful your campaigns are:
- Number of connections, likes or followers.
- Number of shares of your content.
- Website traffic generated because of your social media content.
- Number of new leads developed through social media.
Conclusion
Social media is an important part of our lives. Too many businesses and consumers are using it for your business to ignore it. If you aren’t using social media, then your competitors probably are, and you will lose out.
Start your social media campaigns today to increase your business’ revenue.
What social media platforms do you use? How much time a day do you spend on social media?
Let us know in the comments below.
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Social Media vs. Email Marketing For Small Businesses
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
It is often the biggest asked question of whether social media or email marketing is better for small businesses. Both are very active marketing formats and both have their advantages, yet neither is the perfect solution alone.
Let’s explore both concepts and make a determination on how each one should be used in the online marketing of your products and services.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has been one of the hottest new marketing methods which online marketing professionals have been utilising for a while now.
Social media has a great potential for gaining awareness of a brand. In fact a number of studies have shown that consumers enjoy and actively seek out information about new brands through Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Some consumers have even stated that they would not buy from a company that had no social media footprint at all.
However, social media alone cannot be relied upon. A study in 2012, found that of 77,000 online purchases, less than 1% could be contributed to social media marketing.
The fact is that even though people are looking for you on social media, they are looking for information, content and engagement. They are not looking for sale links or speeches. Therefore small businesses should be cautious in this approach.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a staple of online marketing. In fact the first email sent for marketing purposes was sent in 1978, when Thuerk decided to send an email promoting DEC machines to 400 users of their network. Things have changed significantly since then.
Now email marketing is very common and instead of marketing just products or services, it can take many different forms.
Getting a list of contacts is also harder than it has been in the past. Individuals are likely to change their email address several times and addresses are more unique and customisable. It is also a very different legal landscape than it was before. There are now laws governing what an email should contain and how you can gather the names for your campaigns.
The only way people will join a mailing list is if they sign up to it, which means they must first find your email sign up page.
That being said though, email is not an ineffective method of marketing. According to the same Forrester report mentioned earlier, email marketing generated 13% of sales from those customers who had previously interacted with other forms of marketing; this was the second most popular purchasing path.
Therefore once you have attracted them to your newsletter and sent them an email, there is a good chance they will buy a product or service from you.
Conclusion
It is tough for email marketing as it is a great sales avenue but it cannot auto-generate a list effectively.
On the other hand, social media is not a great sales avenue but is really good for being discovered by consumers.
Therefore, instead of your business questioning which one is best for you, you should consider how you can integrate the two marketing approaches so they can work together. So consider that you attract your audience with your social media campaigns and direct them to methods in which they can sign up to your newsletter.
Once they have signed up to your email list, you can then introduce them slowly to your products and see how you can produce a steady stream of highly engaged consumers who know both your social media and newsletters.
Take Action:
- Start integrating your social media and email marketing campaigns into a single marketing process.
How do you integrate social media and email marketing? What have your results been?
Let us know in the comments below:
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