Social Media Forecaster Dr Kenny Russell, tells companies they need to start planning to use social media the right way to grow their businesses before it is too late!
Start planning to use social media
Product and Service Industries and Not For Profits all have brands which are competing against each other for a share of the market. They are all looking for more customers and ways to gain attention in an ever increasing competitive world, where consumers are bombarded with more and more marketing messages on a daily basis. Many organisations are finding that tried and tested approaches are not working as well as in the past.
The variety of media channels and the huge choices in digital media especially, is essentially responsible for the decline in marketing success. People are subjected to more and more marketing messages through the increasingly diverse range of these channels. This means they have to learn different ways to filter them out and become more selective to the ones to which they respond.
Today 90% of TV adverts are skipped with DVR boxes and the like, which means that only 18% of TV ads these days are having success. The majority are linked to reality TV shows showing the power of social media interaction with traditional marketing. Only a few years ago traditional advertising yielded much higher returns. It is not just in the TV media markets the decline of tried and tested approaches are affected, it is all over.
There’s also more choice and more information available now than there has ever been, so consumers can afford to be, and need to be, considerably more ‘picky’ than they once were.
There won’t be one of us, I am sure unaware of the marketplace changes because we are all riding on the wave of change even if it is albeit reluctantly. Business owners are also consumers and instead of just using social media for their ‘at home’ advantage; in the office many are numb to the social media revolution.
We need to reassess how we do business on a day to day basis taking account of how the real world is ticking. How you do this could make or break the future of your company so it is an important time to research your options.
Getting high ranks in Google was yesterday’s news. It still has relevance but people care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google rank them. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations whilst only 14% trust advertisements.
Internet is playing an enormous role in providing the consumer’s different choices. This enabling them to make the best choice, be it cheaper prices for the same product, or supporting information building consumer trust and desire. Your customer today has access to different channels to make comparisons to what you offer and can find it in seconds. They are making more informed decisions based on the relative benefits, quality and value across a wider range of goods and services. But more importantly the attention is towards independent ratings and reviews thus helping more and more to decide to do business with you or not. And, if that doesn’t present enough of a challenge, there is suddenly a proliferation of social media channels online where people are sharing opinions with each other about the brands that they are happy with or not.
More and more clients are requesting help in identifying where potential customers would be engaging in conversation. More to the point is how to create and start relevant conversations to boost customer confidence and open up a whole new way of building new clients. If your business is built on cold calling as a major part of your marketing, then developing keys to increase your conversion rate must include social media areas helping you to develop greater ways to interact with potential customers.
If you have a quality customer base but are not looking at ways to maximise value for this base I recommend an action plan to get conversations started through your current and past customers. This can be advantageous to start building conversations about your company and must not be overlooked.
So recapping, we are showing a massive shift in the relationship between people and brands. A social trend is in full swing and people are using technologies to get what they need from one another, instead of from the old traditional institutions and companies. To be successful you will have to abandon the one-way marketing campaigns for the two-way dialogues. Can your business yield control of the message in support of the role of participant in the conversation?
This means getting rid of carefully developed brand and service communication for a more personal language. So, having a website is just not enough anymore. Forward-looking businesses understand that they need to be more flexible; that they need to engage people in a genuine dialogue rather than broadcast marketing messages at them. The key in helping spread the message is to add easy social media links to and from the company website.
Do you have the right presence online?
Are you connecting to social communities that your existing or potential customers and shareholders enjoy to use?
This is not the only thing that businesses are going to have to do differently.
These social platforms have a different ethos and can take some getting used to for newbies, and presents challenges, as social platforms have their own unwritten rules.
- They are very open and unbiased and require:
- The softer skills of conversation and collaboration
- Freedom of sharing information
- Honest discussion of views
- Values, Goals, Successes and Failures, Highs and Lows
rather than the polished diplomacy of yesterday’s public relations’ approach and the all familiar hard sell of advertising or the push of marketing.
Understanding, and your response to this in the right way, is very important for companies and brands. Both in communicating with clients and potential customers, reaching out to people who may need their services and products.
High street retail brands are investing faster, in testing new routes to market. This is ahead of the business to business companies response, to testing new ways to market their products and services. This is due to the sheer pressure from consumers in the retail sector who are voting with their hard earned cash, and credit cards, by showing loyalty to the retailers who provide an easy online approach. Switched-on retailers are generally more open to taking the risk that testing new channels requires. This is because they have had the most to lose. It’s understandable that B2B companies have been more reluctant to invest in social media marketing than the retail sector. This is because they have presumed a slower decline with thinking that traditional marketing still is the No.1 method used. The way the markets run now are completely different even in day to day B2B operations. In an environment where recession is demanding companies make lower risk decisions, doing only what worked in the past, and drawing from the well of corporate experience it all sound good but the way the world does business has changed.
If we just spend more money doing what we have always done in the past, with our tried and tested history, we run the risk of seeing decline and more companies failing. B2B is becoming the victim of the old story of the frog being boiled in the pot. Sorry to be a prophet of doom, but our local businesses are being brought to the boil on a slow simmering path of destruction. Is it too late? For some, yes, but for those willing to make the right investment and get help there is still time.
My advice for companies today is this; to ignore social media isn’t really an option any more.
Most social media tools are available free of charge and getting easier and simpler to use, so there’s no reason to not start applying links to social media sites as well as joining in the conversation.
In my observation many reports on the internet suggest you just try out using the tools to get your company connected. Given it may be all new to your company; I advise having outside help to evaluate the best way forward for your company. Some businesses are easy to add to social media than others requiring a more complex approach. Only then, can you really start to figure out how it might work for your business.
So what’s to consider before your business gets started?
Your business objectives are a good place to begin. It is also important having an understanding of where people might already be talking about you, and engaging with your particular brand or services online. Have you Googled your company recently? You might be surprised at what you will find.
Thinking strategically about the applications of social media is vital. If you start now you could discover an opportunity to take advantage of the social media growth in your chosen business field. If your competitors have not already begun to seriously apply social media programmes, you will be at an advantage even if you are late to get started. The majority of companies I have reviewed or researched are still not taking seriously the need to invest. They are just dipping their toes in the water and have a complacent view on what they could possibly achieve. They spend a few hundred pounds as if they were buying lottery tickets just to see if something happens. So this can be an amazing opportunity for your company to get ahead.
By having the right social media support in what to do as a business, and by learning how to read your competitors social media programmes, the potential exposure your business could achieve has no limits. But it is not going to be an instant success on most occasions. You must have a plan and you must have a budget.
Here are some helpful steps
Step 1 Measure your clients and customers’ social activities.
Step 2 Research how your competition is engaging in Social Media.
Step 3 Set goals on what you want to accomplish.
Step 4 Recognise how customer relationships will change and set an action plan in place.
Step 5 Identify the best way to interact with social sites and what tools you will use.
Step 6 Decide a budget and start to build.
Step 7 Create a social media servicing plan.
As you can see in these 6 steps above the No.1 focus is on the customer/client and objectives not equipment. Don’t waste time trying to get onto every social media channel. This may not be helpful to achieve your objectives or support in connecting with your targeted audience. If money is tight it is best to focus on a few select channels with the warmest market potential.
What do we need to achieve?
Which audiences are important to achieve this?
Where are those audiences online, and which platforms are they using?
Do those platforms and tools fit with the kind of content we have or can create?
Can we sustain what we start?
Closing point is also important to consider carefully. There is no point in prioritising a presence on Social media channels if you don’t have the time, money or expertise to create engaging content. Nor is it helpful setting up a Twitter profile or a blog if you don’t have time to post frequently. Equally, if your organisation already creates a lot of article content, a web streaming channel could be right for you. This would represent a fairly low-maintenance way creating a social presence that can be linked to content on other platforms later. Other groups your clients, or other interested audiences, may have set up on places like Facebook.
Wherever you decide it makes sense to have a presence. You do need to be able to make a commitment to posting and sharing content fairly frequently. If you actively engage people anywhere through a social platform, you will have become an important part of their online world. Your absence will be noticed and commented on if you suddenly stop posting. The rewards of engaging with social media should far outweigh the commitment and developments, so don’t let that stop you getting out there.
Dr Kenny Russell
Gottalife Business Solutions International