Gone were the days when the radio and TV stations were the Holy Grail and control the media—they have access to the public and charge exorbitant prices to market your products and services.
But times have changed!
Now there is a new big thing here called social media with a much bigger and greater audience than TV and radio stations. Now companies, businesses, institutions and organizations can now market and build their brands on a much greater platform through social media marketing.
But what is what social media marketing?
Let’s look what some authority sites say about social media marketing.
“Social media marketing is the process of gaining traffic and attention from social media sites,” Search Engine Land.
“Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service,” Wikipedia.
“Social media marketing is the process of marketing through social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and You Tube,” Life Wire.
So in a null shell, social media marketing is the process of using social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to connect with your target market, promote your brand and possibly generating leads for your sales funnel. The social media platforms you use, the contents you post, the way you engage and your frequency of engagement forms your overall social media marketing strategy.
You need to understand that is social media marketing—not social media selling. That’s where most businesses, companies and entrepreneurs miss it. Social Media Marketing will not replace the sales function of your business. So if you promote your business on social media and you sit down waiting for the sales to come—you’ll get your business broke.
What Social Media Marketing Will Do For Your Business
What social media marketing will do for?
It will help you to attract and gain leads (prospects that you can do business with). You have to develop a sales system that will help you to convert those leads into customers in order to use social media marketing to grow your business.
In order to maximize the power of social media marketing for your business, you have to develop a social media marketing strategy that is focus on lead generation, brand awareness and customer service provision. Then you must develop a sales system that is focus on converting those leads obtain from social media into customers.
But what is a lead in social media marketing?
A lead is potential customer that has gain interest in your product, services or marketing material and has offered you his/her address (name, contact number or email) in exchange for your offer or to do business with you!
Once you get access to the contact information, you can then use a sales system to follow-up on them and then convert them into customers. Social media helps you to drive traffic to your site; e-mail marketing helps you to get access to their contact information.
You can also use social media messengers like Facebook Messenger to chat people who show interest in your product, service or marketing material and then get access to their contact information! Then you take it from there!
So what do you need for social media marketing?
- Social Media Page
- A Content Management Platform (Blog)
- Call-to-Action (CTA)
- Social Media Messaging Account
Social Media Page
This is where you share your contents (marketing materials)—pictures, videos, articles, blog posts, case studies, white papers and promotional posts—with your target market. The social media platform you choose must be the one that your potential customers are frequent and dominant on.
Content Management Platform (Blog)
Social media platforms are always hungry for fresh, valuable and relevant content. Better put, your target market on social media are hungry for information to help them solve their problems, fill their needs and achieve their goals. A blog is where you create and publish those contents and share them to your target market on the social media platforms.
Call-to-Action (CTA)
Remember that the whole purpose of social media marketing is to generate leads that you will convert them into customers. Social media is supposed to help you to provide customer service to your existing customers by educating them to get referrals and to also connect with potential customers.
By sharing your blog contents on social media, people who want to learn and read more can click on your blog post link and visit your blog. If you have a call-to-action (CTA)—in the form of subscriber pop-ups, embedded forms or sign up forms on your blog—that offers a valuable content like an eBook or PDF report for free, those visitors can provide you their contact information for it. Immediately, you have got a lead for your sales funnel!
Social Media Messaging Account
Apart from using your CTA on your blog to get contact information of people who show interest in your offer, you can also do it manually through social media messaging. Most social media accounts have a private messenger that helps you to chat and connect with people directly!
What you do here is to send a “thank you note” to people who like your social media posts and then introducing them to one of your offers that is related to your post. Remember, that social media is not for direct and hard selling. What you do here is just thank the fellow for liking, commenting or showing interest in your post and then you ask them politely if they would like to go further by getting your offer.
In Conclusion
Social media marketing is simply using social media platforms to market your business. The end result can be brand awareness, customer service provision and lead generation. To generate leads, you must create a blog, create contents continually and then share them on social media platforms.
With the help of your call-to-action (CTA) on your blog you can get access to potential customer’s information for lead conversation. You can also use social media messaging to connect with fans and get access to their contact information to fuel your sales funnel!
Hey, do you love this article? What’s on your mind? Share your comments below!
Do you want to create a blog for your business, create contents for your business blog or you need a social media manager to help manage your social media platforms?
Contact Us
Email: [email protected]
Call: +233548334499