Social Media Marketing ... 

Social media marketing is a fairly recent addition to the list of tools that companies are using to build brand recognition and customer relationships. Social media marketing works to connect with a targeted market. It coordinates the elements of advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion. But most of all, it is designed building trust and customer loyalty.

Advertising in the current age of electronic media is much different than it was even five years ago. Old school marketing techniques like trade shows, seminars, cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and print advertising is just not that effective anymore. Even some of the techniques developed as little as 5 years ago are becoming out of date. Things like Pop-up ads and bulk email blasts are for the most part ineffective.

These methods are often referred to as outbound marketing. Outbound marketing, describes the action of pushing your message on the masses by continually exposing them (often times when they are least likely to be receptive) in the hopes that it will resonate with some of them and make them want to buy what you are selling.

Outbound marketing is less effective for two main reasons. First, the buying public, (your potential customers), are being inundated with thousands of outbound marketing interruptions every day via radio, TV, phone and Email and they have figured out how to block them out. These ways include caller id boxes, E-mail spam filtering, media recording devices like Tivo, and by subscribing to satellite radio broadcasts. Secondly, the lower cost of learning about something new or shopping for something new using the Internet has made it cheaper and more convenient. We all know that it is now much cheaper, (and faster), to use the Internet to learn something, verses going to a seminar at the Hilton. We also know that buying tickets online can be much cheaper and it is much more convenient than getting that same ticket at the ticket counter or from a travel agent.

Marketing to people who are trying to block your message out is at the very least, counter productive. Also, based on the percent of ROI it can be very costly.

“Inbound marketing” on the other hand, is the art of “getting found” by people who have already learned about your products or services and have begun shopping for someone to provide it to them. In order to “get found” you need to have your website set up so that it attracts these prospective customers naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and also through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and others.

Statistics show that most businesses today spend 80% to 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and only 10% to 20% on inbound marketing. In order to maximize profits in this economy and get more market share, these ratios should really be flipped.

It also stands to reason that if you target customers who are ready to buy what you sell, you will make more sales.

Let our full service marketing and design team help you implement one of our proven strategies. 

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