Social Media Is Too Important To Ignore!
Social Media is an essential component of effective marketing. It is far too important to ignore, but you must do it well to get results. There are several components to success:
- Select the right social media channels for your business.
- Develop a Social Media Plan that includes how you will measure success.
- Post regularly and keep to this schedule
- Respond quickly to all comments, in particular any negative comments.
- Measure regularly so that you can monitor results.
Decide What Results You Are Seeking
If you want your social media to deliver results, you have to be clear what results you are seeking. Take care to avoid "vanity projects", such as getting more Facebook Likes. Yes, it does look good to have thousands of Likes, but if this is all you have, then you have fallen into the vanity trap.
A very important question you need to answer is "what is the value of a new lead?" You cannot answer this in isolation. This means looking at the bigger picture and this includes your Sales Funnel and Sales Process.
You probably do not know how many views you need to get one sale and you may wonder why this information might be useful. Once you break down the steps from someone visiting your website or reading a social media post, the logic should become clearer. Get this right before even thinking about social media.
Be Clear About Your Sales Funnel
Let's look at this from the perspective of one of your sales team. We will call this person Mary. If you simply tell her to reach a certain sales target next month, just stating one figure is unlikely to achieve very much. You need to ask Mary a series of questions, such as the ones below.:
- How many sales phone calls can you make each week?
- What is your success rate at getting a meeting?
- How many sales meetings can you have each week?
- What proportion of meetings result in a quote?
- What is the success rate of quotes?
It may help to work backwards. There is one more step of market research to identify who to phone. In this instance, it takes 12 phone calls to generate one sale. Once you have this figure, you are then in a position to make an informed estimate of the value of a phone call. These metrics also give you a means of tracking progress and conversion rates.
Sales
1
Quotes
3
Meetings
6
Phone Calls
12
Research
18
Now let's turn this around and start with views. You are now looking at the main steps in a Sales Pipeline or Funnel. This is likely to vary by product category as well as customer segment. It will also vary by social media channel.
Views
Leads
Enquiries
Quotes
Sales
This takes us back to the starting point. You need to be able to assign some dollar value to a view or lead so that you know how much you can afford to spend.
Which Are The Best Social Media Channels?
There is no single right answer here. Here are some general guidelines, which you should find useful.
- Social Media requires dedicated and consistent effort.
- This means it is better to devote your time and effort to a few social media channels and do it well, rather than spreading your resources too thinly.
- LinkedIn is the most important professional network. If you are selling to other businesses, you need to be active in LinkedIn. This is your primary B2B channel.
- Facebook is primarily for consumers, but it is becoming more important for businesses. This is your primary B2C channel.
- YouTube is the second largest search engine, with Google being number one. Google owns YouTube and your YouTube videos appear in Google searches. If images beat text, video beats images.
- Twitter is second for B2C and third for B2B. This is only worth considering if you have the resources to tweet regularly and this means hourly not weekly!
These charts from Social Media Examiner show the differences between B2B and B2C. Facebook is the clear winner in B2C, but LinkedIn only just beats Facebook in B2B.
The Social Media Landscape: B2B vs B2C
LinkedIn is the Premier B2B Channel
LinkedIn is dynamic electronic billboard, which you should be using to present your value proposition and to grow your network.
Too many LinkedIn profiles are poorly written and some seem to be modelled on a tombstone! Just listing your current and a few previous roles with only company name, role and dates, presents you in a very poor light. Posting a full CV is another mistake.
There are two important aspects to getting value from your LinkedIn profile and most people ignore both of them.
- Make sure your profile has an "All Star Rating" and invest time to have an engaging profile that will attract the right people.
- Be a person of value to build your network. This means developing relationships, participating in Linkedin Groups, posting updates with valuable information.
Click on the image below to read post that shows you how to get results from your LinkedIn profile.
Facebook Advertising
Many commentators lament the decline in Facebook organic traffic. This may be tough, but we all have to live with this. Facebook ads presents great opportunities for very targetted and cost effective adverts. You can also measure the results in real-time and make adjustments to optimise your budget.
How much should you spend on a Facebook Ad?
To answer this question, you need to know what this is worth to you. Let's suppose you start a Facebook campaign and for every dollar you spend, you receive two dollars in profit. Mapping out the steps should make this clearer;
- Spend $1 and generate $2 in clear profit.
- Great, now spend $2 and get $4 in clear profit.
- Even better! Spend $4 and get $8 in clear profit.
So once you have done some tests on a modest budget, you can afford to ramp up your advertising spend. Do track this carefully as you may need to make some changes to your campaign and this could include the price you are charging.
The answer to this question is: "If you are making money, then spend as much as your can afford".
YouTube Is The Second Largest Search Engine
The number one search engine is Google and Google owns YouTube. Videos posted to YouTube appear in Google searches and they stand out from images and text. If you want your target audience to find and watch your videos, you have to publish your videos on YouTube.
You need to do more than just publish. You have to optimise your videos so people searching on YouTube find your video in a search and then decide to watch your video.
Click on the image and learn how unlock the secrets to YouTube marketing.
The video below is a Mindshop Online Trailer Video.
Twitter Video Cards
There is more to Twitter than 140 character tweets. Twitter Video Cards are free, but you do need to have a Twitter Ads account. There are four main elements:
- 116 characters for the Tweet
- Video
- Title of up to 70 characters
- Description of up to 200 characters.
This is far more poweful than a basic tweet.
Refer to the preview below.
What Impact Would Better Use of Social Media Have On Your Business?
If this question sparks your interest, we would love to hear from you!
We can help you make sense of Social Media, select the right channels for your business and get results.
Please contact me if you have any questions about Social Media. You can reach me on mobile, Skype or the chat box below.
Simon Fawkes
Director, Business to Markets Ltd,
