Would You Like to Engage Your Market With Social Media
For starters, engaging your market with social media is more than having a Facebook page, it is about conversations. The What, Where, Who, When and How of your business activities. It is about telling your Brand’s story and getting your market to connect with you on social media. Your story makes your brand relevant to your consumers. Think about Coca-Cola and Nike. The stories they build and the images they use connects with people all over the world. Want something closer to home? How about Petronas advertisements? These are stories from the heart and they touch people.
Most businesses in Malaysia do not have an integrated advertising campaign. I am not talking about an advertising campaign with an award-winning ad agency. What you need is to present your advertising across multiple media, with the same use of colors, image and marketing message. The message has to be consistent and must be implemented in your place of business on daily basis.
Use cross channels to get your marketing message across, billboards, videos, newsprint ads, social media and any other communication channel you use. You need to reinforce the message until your customers get it. That is your brand’s story – who you are, what you stand for, and how you are a part of your community.
Act Global and Think Local.
Get Started Engaging Your Market With Social Media
The term “social influencer” has gain much use since the rise of social media. Basically, a social influencer is someone with a large following on a social network so his comments get read by thousands or tens of thousands of people. Their strength is their communication reach which potentially may reach a million people. Klout.com is one example of influencing markets with social reach and was used by Chevrolet. Closer to home is ChurpChurp.com, they use social media to generate exposure for your brand or event. This is known as “Social Seeding”.
The cost of a social seeding campaign will cost you RM5,000 for one run. You get a few thousand tweets and facebook posts that promote your campaign. This is the equivalent of handing flyers and handbills for your business promotion. The cost comes out to be almost equal. The difference is how it reaches your market and which segment of the market it reaches. The effectiveness on this depends on how well you target your market – age group, location, education and so on.
But for a social marketing campaign to be really effective, you need to integrate into your marketing campaign. It is a part of the whole, and it includes ad and media buy, email, website and in store advertising.
Most businesses uses advertising to get customers into the door and that is it. The traditional way. Today, successful companies find ways to keep their customers engaged. Which is another way of saying, keep the customers coming back. Businesses need to find ways to become relevant in their customers daily routine or lifestyle, and this is the same for corporate customers.
Getting customers through the door is one thing, but you must close the the sale. You should have a defined sales objective for any marketing campaign. If you are not in sales, you still need an objective whether it is in signups or whatever metrics you use to define your objective. It is up to you, of course, but I would tie the metrics into your sales or generating leads that translates to sales. At the end of the end, an ad campaign is defined by how much it contributes to your bottom line.
Brands Need Love: Engaging Your Market With Social Media
For business owners who do not have an advertising budget but is tempted to use social media, start thinking like a customer. Start by listening and conversing. Stop telling people to buy your stuff, they will if they like your message. You can position yourself within your industry.
