CRMSoftware.TV recently interviewed three experts from HubSpot and Silverpop to discuss common misconceptions around social media marketing, as well as a few strategies for success. I think they shared a lot of great advice! Here are a few key takeaways and answers they provided to specific questions:
- When you get involved in social media, remember you don’t need to be everywhere all at once. It’s important to really think about where your customers are and which platforms they’re using.
- Consider the purpose behind each social media activity. Are you doing it to raise awareness of your business or simply to boost your ego and feel good about yourself? When investing in social networking for your company, you need to make sure there’s a valid point to it.
- 60-80% of buyers do research before talking to a sales rep; social media helps give them information about your business.
- Consumers will be apathetic if you don’t give them something interesting, so try to come up with ways to be engaging.
What are the first steps to building a social media strategy?
- Make sure you think about your objectives in advance. It’s okay to dabble a bit for fun, but eventually you need to come back to the question, “can we convert this lead into a potential customer?” Before spending serious time in social networking, make sure you clearly understand what you’re trying to achieve.
- Look at what activities in your marketing strategy is already working for you, and think about how you can leverage social media to make it more effective. The example they gave was trade shows – if that’s where you’re finding most of your customers, consider ways to use social networking to make your efforts there even more efficient.
- Let your personality shine through in your social media channels. People are much more interested in companies with character, so make sure your business isn’t boring while social networking.
How do you prove value or ROI?
- Remember that social media is a different beast, so think about how you’ll establish ROI other than in the traditional ways.
- Are you asking every single new lead how they found you? Look at the results – was social networking a catalyst in transitioning a potential lead into a customer? Is that how they initially discovered your business?
- Look at the percentage of new customers you touched through social media and ask yourself a few key questions: did your social networking efforts help you generate new leads? Did those leads convert to sales? What’s the ratio?
Do you need help with your company’s social media efforts? Give us a call – we can help!
Photo Credit: ivanpw