Today’s topic is Social Media Marketing
Hi guys! So today I want to talk to you a little bit about social media marketing, and it’s all the craze right now. It seems like every week we’re getting some social media platform. Sometimes it could be a little even, while other times leaving out the new ones that are coming out. Facebook is the biggest sure. You also have Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. If you wanted to start a social media campaign one of the things you’re going to encounter is where do I start.
Having an understanding of the platforms is important. You should know a little bit about the demographic, what kind of content fits where, and more importantly than that the first starting point is analyzing who your customer is. Basically figuring out how does your customer finds you. Will they find you on the social media platform you chose? What kind of product do you have and what kind of things? Let’s use some examples of your customer. The one that I’m going to use is a recent interaction with a client.
Why demographically is important
The gentleman does roofing as a commercial roofer and we were discussing social media things. In this example, he’s getting the commercial contracts through a bidding process of over-the-door city contracts and the like. Social media for him is not really a big deal. How are people finding him? Easy, they’re not. He logs onto a bidding platform and pays for the leads. Being on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat is really not gonna help him.
His industry is probably more suited for LinkedIn, which is more of a business-to-business social media platform, not so much for getting the business but maybe for some branding and recognition as well as some interactions between executives of these companies. It’s not being used for the pitch but more to be seen, get some content up and talk about his business. So when these decision-makers are going through those bids, he is in the background or just in the back of their mind. The company name sounds familiar and that’s key.
Who is your customer and what are they doing? Another example would be the demographics on some of these platforms. For example, Snapchat has a young demographic so what are you selling? If you’re selling life insurance that’s probably not the greatest place to be. If it’s these cute little bracelets or fidgets spinners then that is the place to be. These are just some thoughts for you to think about and consider when you are going through this.
Where should I be and where should I advertise?
Whether you do it or you have someone else to do it, this is important. Let’s say you run into somebody that’s an expert on Snapchat and this guy’s great. He’s number one in Snapchat and he pitches you on a Snapchat marketing campaign. If he’s really good then he knows it probably would not work for you. You should probably take a pass on that and maybe give you a little bit of advice like suggesting you try another demographic.
These things you can just Google them and probably find some demographic data out there. Just off the top of my head, I would probably say that Snapchat is the youngest crowd followed by Instagram. Facebook is known for your being your mom’s or your grandma’s social media platform, even though everybody is there. How active they are is a different story, however. A lot of content is getting posted on Facebook from Instagram so you see a lot of posts on Facebook that I see of friends and people I follow and I know they’re not on Facebook – they’re on Instagram. The content just gets dumped over into Facebook. Know a little bit about your demographic, know your customer, and how are your customers finding you.
Another example I can give you in our current business is in computer repair. The typical customer if their computer breaks down they go to Google and do a search. That’s something that if you’re in that type of business you have to realize that and just be there. If we do social media it’s more of a branding thing but it’s not the primary way that people are getting to us. Same thing with iPhone repair. Somebody breaks their iPhone, at some point in time they’re probably going to go on Facebook and do a search, but generally, they just use a Google search. So in that kind of business you need to be there.
Match your business to your demographic
Other businesses like maybe a dentist or something to that effect, it’s a business that people are looking more for referrals. Being on Instagram when you offer a professional service creates two things going against you. One is to the age of the demographic and people generally want to get some type of referral. I don’t think that they have reviews or similar on Instagram, so it’s a kind of tough one to be on. More and more they’re on Facebook looking at reviews. In time people will actually use Facebook to search for products, similar to a service like Yelp, where they would just search and look at your reviews.
Another example would be a restaurant. With a restaurant, most of the customers are looking for a restaurant. Once they decided on a restaurant they’re going to use Yelp which is a review-based social media platform. You can have friends and peers that get on the social side every day, notifications are generated and sent out to users that a friend reviewed something, a friend checked in somewhere, etc. In the restaurant business, you definitely want to be on a review platform. A restaurant being on Snapchat wouldn’t be as important as a peer review based platform.
The point to bring to your attention is that you shouldn’t ask what the best, hottest platform is. The hottest platform might not be the platform for you and have a thousand people scroll through or fly through your ad that’s of no interest doesn’t really help you. It’s better to have ten targeted people for example than 1000 random targets. You’re better off having fewer targeted viewers with better attention than the masses.
Getting your target’s attention
Another thing with social media to consider is people are not really sitting there analyzing things. They are just scrolling and flying through pages and their feeds. If you do have something there it has to be eye-catching. People are not going to stop and try to figure out what you’re trying to say. It has to grab their attention, but that’s getting more into the strategy of what type of content you’re going to use once you’ve decided on which of the platforms is right for you.
Push and Pull Marketing
The last thing I want to bring up here today is about two types of marketing and what applies to the social media side. I call it push marketing and pull marketing, depending on what your product is. It would help you to determine if social media would be something that’s good for you. Social media is something a little bit more on the push side. Push means something like an impulse type product.
I use real-life examples because they’re just easier for me to explain and they’re actually accurate versus coming up with theoretical things. With that in mind, a great example I love to use is the example of a flat tire. There are very few shops that just fix flat tires. Let’s say for purposes of this example that you fix flat tires. No matter how much you’ve advertised on Facebook on Instagram, any of those social platforms really, if I don’t have a flat tire I generated no interest in the product.
That’s what an example of push marketing is like. Push in this example is getting in front of the customer. So the customer is on Facebook scrolling and you’re going to get in his way with a product. That leads itself more to an impulsive type item. So pushing yourself onto Facebook if you’re fixing flat tires wouldn’t be the greatest thing in the world. I use my example of the iPhone repair. I can pound iPhone repair in your feed but if you don’t have a broken iPhone it really doesn’t matter. You’re not gonna fix an iPhone that isn’t broken. again. It’s not an impulse type item.
With a push type approach, you’re pushing yourself and your ad in front of people, as opposed to food for example. Everybody eats, and so you’d push some advertising there about some nice dishes. People see them – they get the name and when they get hungry which will be today, tomorrow, and the next day, every single day, you have an opportunity to sell them. You have what will you see primarily on a lot of social media or make money type advertisement that’s an excellent push type example of marking.
Everybody wants to make more money, so if you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed and you see the make more money ads, you don’t have to necessarily have a big problem like a flat tire. You might take a look at female demographics for example. Shoes would probably be an example. Women can’t have enough shoes, so if you have a shoe store, pushing it onto a social media platform, you could target it to just women at different demographics. Keep in mind that that’s something a customer could be getting in their feed. They get something that they aren’t necessarily looking for – it’s an impulse they get which makes them click on your link and make a purchase.
When to use Pull marketing
The pull-type marketing is along the lines of when people are looking for something. As an example, my computer breaks so I’m going to need to go look for computer repair. Another example is my phone breaks. I’m also going to need to go look for a repair service. If I get a flat tire then I’m going to go to look for someone that can change the flat. Primarily, a search engine is the best place to be on for this method, but it also applies to social media.
To summarize, what we have here is to first try to determine if you’re going to push your ads or if you need to pull your customers in. Reel them in or getting in front of their face to sell them something. You’re getting in front of your prospective customer – that means you most likely have an impulse item. Something that they don’t necessarily need right now but when they see your product they think “hey I want one of those. I didn’t know I wanted it until I saw your ad”. The other points are to know your customer. Is your customer male or female, tall or short, as well as one of the most important factors – their age. Knowing your customer demographic will help guide you towards which social media platform would be best for your business.
Social Media platforms fill a specific niche
Lastly, some mediums I didn’t talk about like Twitter have different themes and uses. An example of different themes in social media would be like Instagram, which is based on pictures. So if you have a furniture store or something like that it’s just a matter posting pictures, which is also what people are paying attention to on Facebook. But there you can do more things in addition to only images, like text and video. You could also post videos on Instagram though there are more sharing and interaction there such as with groups. Twitter is primarily text-based now. While yes, you can do pictures, but Twitter has limited character text. Users are just flying through a feed. LinkedIn is geared toward business people.
Know the demographics, which platform applied to your demographic and what they cater to. Don’t go into Snapchat for life insurance ads since it just doesn’t make sense. If anything you run the risk of upsetting people which turns to loss of followers etc. Those are some basic tips for you on social media and some marketing strategies. Stay tuned, we’ll be back with some more helpful information!
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