Branding
Let's say that you just opened up a new Hair Salon. You've put in hours of time developing your concept and your brand. You've spent a few thousand dollars placing ads in local newspapers and publications. You even got a local writer to feature you in her weekly newspaper column. You open up shop expecting droves of shaggy haired folk to come charging through your door.
Problem is, when you opened shop, things didn't exactly go as planned.
Sure, a few people showed up - but not as many as you were hoping. Since you're a small business owner, you can't exactly go back to your investment firm to get more money for marketing. You have to wait until you're able to generate enough income to spend more.
One week into opening, you're stuck. Not exactly the position you hoped you'd be in when you opened, is it?
Rewind the tape.
Starting over again. You're opening up a brand new Hair Salon with a unique brand and idea. Only this time, you augment your offline media spend with an investment of time into targeted social media.
You:
- Grab a Facebook Page, Twitter Profile, YouTube account, and a Flickr account.
- Spend the month before you open growing your community. You engage with potential customers on Twitter and Facebook by running localized, real time searches for people talking about hairstyles, haircuts, and salons.
- Post videos and pictures to your YouTube account of you getting the location ready for opening day.
You notice that as you spend more time on these networks, more people are talking to you and you're expanding your reach.
One month before the grand opening, you start running a contest - upload photos or video of your worst haircut, and the winner gets a free fixer cut, plus free haircuts for life. Your Internet audience loves the contest. After all, who hasn't had a bad haircut before? Photos are uploaded, videos are posted and people are spending time with you and your brand. By the time opening day runs around, you've built up so much interest in your Salon that people are dying to find out more. On opening day, you send out a digital coupon to your social network - 20% off of a haircut if you mention the network you found it on.
The shaggy haired folk come to your Salon in droves, coupons in hand.
Even after opening day, your social media efforts continue to pay off as people talk about your Salon to their friends, and your brand starts to grow through word of mouth. You continue to engage in the coming months by posting regular videos and photos of the services you provide. You've even started a haircut of the month club where the top vote getting haircut each month gets a coupon for a free 'do. Your reservations book is filled for the next 6 months - and all because you spent a few hours with some social media tools.
Customer Service & Feedback
You've been running your Hair Salon for a few months now. Business has been good, and thanks to the successful grand opening, you've been able to pay off a few business debts. In fact, business has been so good that you're able to take a week off for vacation. During your vacation, you check your e-mail, and you're greeted by some negative news. According to the Google Alert you set up for your business name, someone wrote a blog post about a poor experience they had at your salon.
Luckily, since you set up the Google Alert, you're able to respond quickly to the person, instead of letting the negative review influence others. To rectify the situation, you create an account on the users website and post a comment on the post with your contact information. You speak directly with the blogger and offer a couple of free haircuts, so they can try your service one more time. A few weeks later, you get another Google Alert in your e-mail - turns out the blogger wrote a follow-up post about your great customer service, and a much better haircut the second time around.
Lead Generation
Let's stick with the example of a new Hair Salon. Through the power of Twitter Search, you're able to search for people who are talking about bad haircuts within 25 miles of your Salon. Whenever someone mentions their bad haircut, you're able to start up a conversation, and offer them a discount on a "re-'do". You find that over time, about 50% of the people you offer this coupon to come in, and of those, 40% come back for another haircut. That's powerful.
You've maintained your Flickr and YouTube accounts since launch, and every now and then, you'll post a coupon code in a photo or video. You estimate that you get about 5 extra people coming in for haircuts each month, and the average customer value of these is about $20 more than standard walk-ins.
The great aspect of social media is with proper attention, it significantly expands the entry points for your brand and business. Now, instead of customers finding you through just Google Search, or the Yellow Pages, they can find you through Search, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, and many, many more.
The possibilities are endless for grassroots, guerrilla style marketing campaigns. All you need is a little bit of creativity, and some time.
Goodwill
What's even more powerful with social media is its capabilities for goodwill generation for your company and brand.
Now that your Salon has built up a following through the various social networks that you're a part of, as you spend time interacting with them, they'll be more emotionally involved with you. What does this mean? More customers, more repeat customers, and more customer referrals. If people are involved with you on an emotional level, they will be much more likely to refer friends and family to your business, as well as talk positivley about your brand.
When it comes down to it, a good customer referral is the most powerful form of marketing there is.
Where We Come In
You get the point. Social media is great, and you need it for your business. But you're probably in one of two common situations. One, you don't have the time for social media. Or, two, you don't know how to make heads or tails of the social media scene. That's where we come into play. We have the time for social media, and we know how craft an expert strategy.
If you don't have the time it takes to be active in social media, that's OK. We do. We'll create a social media strategy for your business, complete with targeted networks and strategies for each. We'll then execute the strategy, or train your internal staff in best practices learned over 10 years in the Internet marketing arena. At LevelTen, we're active in the social media scene, and we know how to plan, execute, and organize so it all makes sense, and so it becomes a productive tool for your company.
If you're interested in exploring social media marketing services, contact us today.
It is true that social media has been giving us so many advantages and facilities. Small businesses should feel it even more because they can afford extra services for lower cost. rubber flooring
Making friends is much easier now, as well as knowing new people and joining communities. That is the power of social media. Discount Shower doors for sale
The marketing and customer service power is everything for businesses. No wonder we have much more users over time. It grows significantly! Turkey villas
It is about the biggest community on the world. Businesses and individuals have felt significant advantages of social media. It is just a new place to gather! airport transportation
If you are not joining nay social media and be active, you are likely to have missed one big thing of the age. It is true. New York Bankruptcy Attorney
I think the most value added benefit social media has to offer is for "customer service and feedback". Imagine where else you can do it so friendly and naturally? free insurance quotes
I use it for branding purposes. Besides the community power is big, social media also allows you to advertise at lower rates. Panama City Beach Vacation Rentals
I agree with the mentioned benefits. At this age, companies or individual sellers who do not make use of social media are left behind. construction industry
Many businesses have also found it useful. Social media is one if the cost effective and powerful advertising media nowadays. Thanks! ZingFind.com
For one best thing, I believe social media has made it easier to interact and be social. I am not a social person at all, so it helps me a lot. hgh therapy
Yes for branding, and yes for online marketing. Social media is no doubt one big part of the two nowadays. Likewise, affiliate marketing training has also been more popular over time.
I agree that social media is mainly powerful for branding and community management. Yes, because you can virtually do things to influence the joined community. private investigator
I have seen many people in popular social bookmarking site selling their products.The main objective of advertising in social networking site is to reach masses and put your product in front of millions of people.No matter how big your brand is or you are a start up company only thing which matter is how well you advertise your product.I have seen in many sites users creating group on specific niche and then convincing people to try out their product like Mount Holder or even the insurance like Tonneau Cover which is hot favorite in the market.
But You have to make sure that the Landing Page Optimization where you are redirecting the traffic has to be good and you have to design it keeping in mind what the user likes
We may be entering a period where major brands and online personalities start to fragment or split a single Twitter account.
The key is hard work and you should constantly try new ideas and various aspects of SEO like Web 2.0 link building and make your site attractive to get organic links and traffic.Then you can see the wonders.
Social media marketing is very beneficial method of online marketing. Specially for small business, social media marketing can be a very effective method of internet marketing in very affordable price. Also SMM campaigns bring you large amounts of backlinks that benefit your ranking in search engines, indirectly help for your SEO activities.
- Scott
When it comes down to it, a good customer referral is the most powerful form of marketing there is!
I agree that social networks are very helpful for the business. They are sources of potential customers. Many Paper Writers wrote about it.
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It is so good to have customer feedback. This will definitely help anybody out and their company. I think this is the biggest key.
Media Planning is well, exactly that - you plan the media(TV,Print,Radio, billboards, posters and other out of home media) for your clients. I think the experience defintely depends on the type of clients and agency you work in. It’s usually not done in house so it’s out sourced to agencies like OMD, MCANN, Zenith etc.
James
Thank you very much for the excellent and useful subject.
Hi,
That’s a great info. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to see the future discussion on these points.
By the way Colin, Love the photo!
All the hours you spend building your social networking pages for business purposes could fall by the wayside someday. Either the fad site you are using will fade or become passé, or external forces will monkey wrench your success.
I recently read an article in my local Sunday business section about the success of a young lady named Allison, who is making connections and selling real estate over Facebook.
I know Allison and I wish her well. I hope she makes a killing in the local real estate market. But she better make her money quickly before the fad wears off.
Facebook is only one of many Web 2.0 social networking sites available over the Internet. There are many, many more, such as:
Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, SMS.ac, Photovations, Kaboodle, Orkut, StumbleUpon, Behance, AOL Buddies, Spaces.live, Xanga, Tagged, Reunion, Classmates, Experience Project, MeetUp, SQUIDOO, Hubpages, How to do things, Friendfeed, Merchantcircle, Yelp, Google KNOL, Aboutus.org, Koynce and Google Profiles.
But did social networking ever exist before all these websites? Well, kind of.
Remember back to the heady days of Geo Cities and Angle Fire where people would flock in mass to build there first website to share, communicate or show-off their nerdy prowess.
Then for the truly nerdy, there was IRC Chat and Usenet Groups.
Given the latest growth trend in these fad websites and applications, there is one constant you can depend on. Eventually, the owners, companies or corporations will do what is in their best interest or the interest of their shareholders.
What does that mean to you?
If you spend hundreds or even thousands of hours building your social networking pages with links, text, photos, documents, video and files, there is no guarantee that all your hard work will be here next week or next year.
Is that really possible?
Sure.
Geocites was a mammoth place that contained hundreds and thousands of websites.Go visit geocities.com.
Doh! (use emphasis to sound like Homer)