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Social Media Marketing For Small Business

Guest post by: Ingrid Cliff

Article Overview: Where does social media – networking sites, forums, blogs, wikis and the like, fit with your overall marketing strategy? Social media does not replace all of your other marketing – it just changes the mix. When I look at a company's marketing I categorise it into two main areas – Online and Offline. I then break these down into further categories.

Social Media Marketing For Small Business

Where does social media – networking sites, forums, blogs, wikis and the like, fit with your overall marketing strategy? Social media does not replace all of your other marketing – it just changes the mix.

When I look at a company's marketing I categorise it into two main areas – Online and Offline. I then break these down into further categories.

Online:

• Website & Search engine strategies

• Customer strategies

• List building strategies

• Sales strategies

• Social Media

Offline:

• Hands-off strategies (where you communicate with your customers indirectly) such as advertising, marketing collateral, direct mail, sponsorship, press releases

• Hands-on strategies (where you communicate face to face with customers) such as trade shows, seminars, events, client nurturing

• Shared strategies (where you work with others to jointly grow your businesses) such as networking, alliances, joint ventures, referrals

When a business is looking at marketing, they need to look at the right blend of these strategies to meet their specific goals.

Social media is just one part of the blend – but there are many reasons I love the Social Media for small business.

For starters the big one – it's almost totally free! The only cost with much of the social media strategies is time if you do it yourself.

You can target your social media strategy so it also achieves the side targets of all of your other online strategies – more loyal customers, bigger list, better sales, and increased search engine presence.

The downside is it can be tricky to learn what to do; many of your peers and colleagues look at you as if you have suddenly grown two heads when you talk about it (so peer support can be quite low); and if not done correctly it can suck up hours of time without much result.

Off-line strategies are more traditional and have been proven to work over the years. The downside is they are often quite costly and in many cases you don't get the results you were hoping for.
I know of people who have paid $3000+ for a tradeshow booth plus fit-out and printing costs, as well as wages and time and ended up with very little result.

With all marketing strategies – both online and off line, you need to calculate return on investment. You want to see how much the strategy costs to acquire a new customer.

So in the case of the tradeshow – let's assume they spent all up $5000 on the show and acquired 10 new customers – the cost to acquire each new customer was $500. You need each customer to spend more than $500 with you over the life of their history with you in order to generate a return on investment.

I recommend businesses run the stats ruler over their networking activities in particular. Add in the membership fees, annual fees, meal fees, lost earning time (if appropriate) and then calculate how much new business you have generated from that process.

This is very confronting for many people – they may enjoy their networking but when they run the financial ruler over it they find they are paying out much more than they are getting back in financial return.

Of course not everything is about money – if you are getting your personal needs for connection and being part of something bigger met, then your investment in networking is a worthwhile one for you personally. Just be clear it is not really a business strategy but a personal strategy and you will go into your next session with a slightly different outlook and will gain more from it as a result.

So back to where social media fits with your marketing strategy. Well it all depends on what you want to achieve, the demographics of your market, the amount you have to spend and the time you have available. In my experience it is something worth adding to your marketing blend.

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  Social media : why should my business use this resource?

Article Tags: advertising marketing, alliances, customer strategies, direct mail, downside, joint ventures, line strategies, loyal customers, marketing collateral, marketing strategy, media strategies, media strategy, peer support, peers, sales strategies, search engine presence, search engine strategies, starters, two heads, wikis



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Online Marketing would be a great title, and having sub categories would make it even better, there would plenty of categories to choose from, Social Media, SEO, Article Marketing and yes even Affiliate Marketing to name just a few, great looking site btw Jeff, take care, Carol
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks


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