Today we will talk about why Social Media is not your magic bullet marketing strategy. A lot of people seem to think that social media is some sort of magic answer to generating leads. The main reason for this Is there are plenty of people who do get a lot of success on Social Media, there are countless examples of this. But the majority of these people have done one of two things to get there and here we are going to discuss them.
You will find that anyone with a large following on social media has invested a lot of time to make it happen. Whether they have a large Youtube Channel or large Facebook or Instagram following, you will find that they have invested a lot of time over a long period of time to get to that particular level.
A lot of people have invested a lot of money on social media outlets. this money could either have been invested directly in the platform, actually promoting the product or service or spent on other people to help promote their product or service. For example, paying influencers to spread the word or paying content creators to put out content on a regular basis.
Basically, you can’t gain success on Social Media unless you are willing to spend time or money and that’s the crux of it. A lot of people think it’s some, “generate leads quickly scheme,” but in reality it doesn’t work that way. How? Firstly let’s talk a little about marketing. There are two main ways to market your product.
<br
Firstly there is solution marketing. This is simple and pretty self-explanatory; it is when someone is looking for a solution. For example, someone searches Google for a plumber in Bella Vista, they have a problem and they need to find a solution i.e. someone to fix their leak. Google acts like a modern-day Yellow Pages. Instead of looking up the yellow pages we now use Google. If you are a clever content marketer, your context will get this person’s attention through the use of Search Engine Optimisation; if you have a video or article you will grab the person’s attention.
The second type of marketing we will look at is interruption marketing. This is traditionally what companies have used on TV, Radio and in Newspapers. Unless you’re watching Teleshopping you’re not there to buy something. People use TV for entertainment, listen to the radio to hear music and read the newspaper for current affairs. So basically your marketing message on these outlets had to interrupt that person, get their attention and somehow become relevant so they will buy something from you. After interrupting someone you would need to have a compelling offer to make them buy.
Now if you think about Social Media, you know people are going there to be entertained, as opposed to looking for a solution. Therefore you need to implement interruption marketing onto the Social Media outlets. If you aren’t getting the results you were expecting, ask yourself, “have I been making a strong enough offer?” If your offer doesn’t stop people in their tracks and compel them to make a purchase it isn’t a strong enough offer. This style of marketing takes more time, as no one can tell you which offer is going to work apart from your marketplace results. You will have to create offers and test run them too see which are successful and unsuccessful.
Think of the last time you bought something on Facebook, how did it happen? Your newsfeed was interrupted and it was most likely a product that you had searched for previously in the week.
If you’re an Ecommerce site, the quickest way to get sales from Facebook is through re-targeting, this works for any website really. For example, let’s say you put a product in your cart, but you don’t check it out. The website can retarget you and say, “Hey you left this in your cart” or, “come back and pay.” We suggest you re-target your website visitors. Now if your website only has 10 visitors a month you aren’t going to get much from re-targeting.
The second thing to do is called a Custom Audience. This is essentially uploading a database or creating a custom audience on Facebook. When making a custom audience we recommend that you upload a database of past customers, current customers and prospects. These people are more likely to react positively to your interruption; you have already some sort of established relationship with them.
The third thing to do is create a look-alike audience. If you have a decent-sized database, you can use what is known as a look-alike audience. You can tell Facebook to create you an audience of people similar to those you have uploaded. Now this can be dangerous, as Facebook does not always get it right. But if it does get it right or in the ballpark, you are on to reach a vast array of potential customers.
The reality is, Social Media marketing is not that effective unless you are willing to throw money at it or invest a lot of time in building up a following. Engagement is very difficult to achieve on Social Media. unless you pump money into it. After all they are companies themselves, they need to make a profit and expect you to pay for engagement. But to answer the question, do you need to be on Social Media as a Business? The answer is yes, think about it, Facebook has millions of daily users worldwide. There are 18 million daily users in Australia alone, so the reality is most of your customer base probably interacts with Facebook frequently. But to successfully reach your potential customers, you will have to spend money and your interruption marketing must have a strong offer and grab your target audience immediately! You need to stop people in their tracks, stun them and hit them with an offer they cannot look past.
Do you need help with social media marketing? If you would like to chat to one of our Digital Pilots, feel free to reach out using this link.
