All Social Media Marketing Is Not Created Equal!
Find out why Social Media Marketing firms work differently and what to ask them.
Social Media Marketing is all about keeping in touch with your contacts via your social media accounts, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Personal contact through social media is 60% more likely to make a sale for you than random email lists.
If you just put a web site out there and expect to get business from it, you’re going to be waiting a long time – and you most certainly won’t succeed. Yet, according to the SMB, 60,000 businesses are started each year, and most do exactly that.
Even if your company gives you a web site, it’s not enough. I’ve worked with so many who said that their company won’t allow them to have a web site of their own, but there are things you can do that they will not object to (more on that later).
But it takes time and consistency to build those relationships on social media, where they know who you are and what you do and trust you. They need to see your name and information eight to ten times in some cases before they feel like you’re someone they can relate to.
Most people only contact their list when they are trying to sell, but “sell, Sell, SELL” doesn’t work anymore – people are inundated with that and not longer respond to it.
Most times people only use Social Media sporadically – when they have time or feel they have something to say. They don’t consistently relate to wish their contacts a Happy Birthday, Congrats on a new job or anniversary, or make any attempt to be personal at all.
Hiring someone to do this for you is the best solution.
When you hire someone to do your SMM (Social Media Marketing) for you, you are trusting that they know what they are doing. You will find varying degrees of that – there are questions you should be asking (later). They should understand your business and your target market, so first clue is: they should be asking a lot of questions as well.
Most importantly, they must understand psychology – what will draw that contact to you if they need your services. They must clearly state why you are different, what you offer that others don’t, and the steps they should take next. People need clear, simple guidance or they won’t follow through.
The two biggest problems that most have with SMM – TIME and MONEY.
Time is understandable because you are busy running your business. One person cannot do everything in a business – there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand that they have to have a marketing budget or they won’t and can’t grow except for their “in person” contacts that they make – and networking can be much more time consuming and much more expensive to boot.
Advice
If you’re asking if you should pay to join any networking group, visit first as many times as allowed. If you get enough business from that to pay for a year’s (or even 6 months) membership, then consider joining.
SMM is one of the least inexpensive, most productive, ways of generating interest. But there is a wide range of prices for social media marketing. The more it costs doesn’t mean the better it is. Because of the way most Social Media Marketing companies do business, you will never know if they are doing you any good or not, especially if you are running other campaigns at the same time.
Most SMM companies do not (because they can not) give you the statistics of every post and every response. They just rely on the fact that most of the SMM companies out there cannot give specifics, so one is just as good as another – NOT SO.
We solve those problems by using a program called SocialZing, which allows us to send out posts to all your major social media accounts on a schedule. We set up some custom messages and we also use the SZ pre-generated posts where they randomize the posts based on your category selection. These posts are refreshed every month, so it’s always new and relevant information.
This also allows us to keep the price very low – we charge a one time fee that most SMM companies charge monthly, but then we can charge a very low monthly fee AND you can get the statistics analysis reporting, which other posting type software charges for (like Hootsuite at $50 per report).
Landing Pages
If you’re a marketing expert, then you can buy the SocialZing package and set all this up yourself, if you have the time. What we do that you most likely can’t is set up a Landing Page – a link included in your post that, when clicked, takes them to a web page set up for you, which allows you both to give more information about yourself and your product and also gather contact information.
Now they are no longer a “contact” – they are a QUALIFIED LEAD, which means they are already interested. This transition is what every marketing company works toward – once they are a qualified lead, you have a much better chance of making a sale.
What I mentioned earlier that we can do where not one company - not a financial services company, realty agency or MLM company - has ever objected to. This approach works as long as you don’t cross the line – make false promises, give away trade secrets, etc. It’s intended to be more personal.
On this page is where we make the case for you of why you are different, better than the rest of your competition and more likely to help them with a better outcome.
This page will encourage them to take the next step by telling them what to do – that’s all most people need. We can use discounts or specials with time constraints if that is useful to you. You can offer a free initial meeting or phone call or Skype.
If we can get a video made by or for you, that will increase the chances dramatically that a visitor will register or actually purchase the product Images of yourself and/or the product, if relevant, are much better than an all text page - those things can really make a difference. But be careful not to use copyrighted images – I can tell you stories about the penalties for that!
Questions you should ask a social media marketing company:
- How many posts will they make per day and per week?
If they can’t do two to three posts per day, they aren’t going to be able to help you get your message out. This is because different people in different situations check their social media at different times. Your post, if it doesn’t hit these times, will get buried in all the other posts being made.
- How do they generate the information for these posts?
If they are trying to do all these posts custom, they are going to charge you for all that time. Of course you need relevant posts – but posts that are NOT meant to sell, Sell, SELL are needed, too. Interesting facts, leadership and positive posts, posts about Social Media Marketing, Health and Wellness facts, Finance, Fortune Cookie, Inspirational, Personal Development, Networking Tips, and Technology are all categories that we have many pre-written posts for and they are refreshed monthly.
- Can they give you the statistics for the results of the posts?
We can give you the analysis to the click. What posts went out, when, how many “registrations” came from which posts so you can make adjustments, how many sales were generated, and we can also customize your reports the way you want to see them.
- Can they provide you with a CRM to put your contacts in so that you can text and email to them (or that you can pay them to do)?
This is a critical piece to your tracking and follow-up. Plus the functionality of being able to send out newsletters. This is usually an extra charge, so keep that in mind.
- What do they charge and are their any extra charges?
Sometimes there are extra charges – like for those reports I mentioned before.
- Always discuss your “target market” – your demographic selections that you are most likely to sell to. They should know this, so you should do the research and know this before you call anyone for any type of marketing.
This post was first published here.
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