If you’re in business you’re dealing with people. If you’re dealing with people it’s social. If it’s social it requires communication. If it requires communication it requires media.
Businesses hosting the media, through which this communication takes place, expose people to their marketing and sales funnel. Moreover, they do this while empowering the people using their site.
The need for a social media strategy, then, is a central to any successful online marketing.
But merely posting something doesn’t mean you’re being noticed.
The history of failed marketing campaigns is littered with expensive social media profiles and channels that nobody ever found. The analogy of ‘Build it and they will come’ just doesn’t extend to the online world.
Instead, savvy marketers are going to where their audiences are. They are insinuating their messages amongst existing discussions. Smart marketers are guiding discussions, building communities, all while exposing these people to their products and sales funnel.
Facebook is still the king of social media.
By integrating Facebook into your social media campaign you are exposing your message (and brand) to more than a billion possible customers.
But with greater exposure comes greater risk.
A well-organised and thought-out social media campaign will leverage your sales results, just as a poorly-organised and confused one will destroy them.
Successful social media campaigns can be run in many ways. I’ll briefly discuss the two strategies most commonly used on Facebook:
Word-of-mouth
Integrating social media into your sales funnel is an exciting feature offered by Facebook; it’s the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth recommendations:
Imagine there is a business selling tickets to an event. Using Facebook, this business is able to reach out to the friends of someone who purchases a ticket. Friends share a lot of similar interests. So it is smart marketing to reach out to the friends of someone interested in the event.
Some of these friends will also buy tickets. So the campaign reaches out to their friends.
And so the process repeats itself; and keeps repeating itself, always seeking out the people most likely to be interested in what they have to sell.
Market research
Facebook is also crucial for today’s market research. It’s the place where groups gather to discuss and share ideas, to meet, argue, and express their needs.
And what business doesn’t want to be aware of these things?
Listening and responding, being part of the discussion in your target community shows you care about them. It also allows businesses to predict and respond to trends and learn of threats and changes in the market environment.
These strategies require a business to be clear about its objectives while also making a commitment to its customers.
And the rewards can be amazing.
Successful social media campaigns are able achieve multiple goals. They can raise brand awareness, boost confidence in products and services, promote trust in a business, leverage sales, and even act as an activist focal point (among many other possible targets).
What these, and all other social media goals, have in common is that their success is integral to the sustainable and on-going growth of every business.
