How to Use Social Media Marketing To Attract and Retain Customers

By Debra Zimmer, The Expert Marketing Coach and CWCC Member

Social media sites are all the rage these days. We comment on friends’ photos, news feeds, jokes, and other activities multiple times a day. But is it possible that these very same social outlets can be a boon for marketing businesses?

Using social media marketing is a very effective method of communicating with both prospective and established customers. In fact, according to a University of Massachusetts marketing research study, 73% of Fortune 500 companies utilize Twitter to announce product information and news. Meanwhile, 66% of Fortune 500 companies have a presence on Facebook. Many others also utilized social media sites such as YouTube and Pinterest to further enhance their marketing campaigns.

One of the more effective ways that businesses can leverage social media is by publishing informative articles and answering customer queries. If customers find the information valuable, they will, in turn, share it with others which could help drive even more attention to the business.

To take this trend a step further, utilizing such elements as social media buttons on a business website is an effective means of spreading the word. For example, a Facebook or Twitter feed link would make sharing web content easier for visitors.

Ensuring that the content is shareable is essential in any social media marketing program. This can be done by helping customers solve common problems, using humor, and even giveaways and contests. The right kind of stories and contests could even go viral and further build the customer base.

One common pitfall to avoid when using social media is to overdo the approach. Cie Andrea Hayden,a Chicago digital marketing consultant, advises to just concentrate on one or two outlets to communicate with your audience and use them wisely, perhaps spending up to two hours a day interacting with visitors on those platforms by answering questions, offering advice, and continuing conversations.

While building a successful customer base using social media marketing can take time and patience, you will soon reap the rewards of increased traffic and sales. Contact us for more information on how you can use social media in your marketing campaign to generate sales. 

Debra Zimmer is an MBA, Certified Executive Mastermind Coach, and Certified Inbound Marketer. Your Virtual Chief Marketing Officer and Social Media Strategist providing Entrepreneurs, Experts and Executives with the Strategies, Systems and Support to Focus Your Brilliance and Magnify Your Impact!! Find out more here.

How to Streamline your Social Media with an Editorial Calendar

By Diana Cordova, Social Media and Content Marketing Consultant

Editorial calendars are often used in different facets of marketing, and social media is no exception.

Once you’ve identified your goals (make sales, attract new customers, build relationships, gain visibility, attract volunteers etc.), your target audience and overall strategy, you can build an editorial calendar that will take you through the entire year of posts and blog articles.

You’ll find that it takes a bit of extra time and effort upfront, but throughout the year it will save you hours and give you a more cohesive plan with consistent messaging to build out your social media.

The editorial calendar can be as simple or extensive as you need it to be.  Here are the basic steps to building a good one:

1. Map out a monthly and weekly calendar that reflects important events such as holidays you want to reference, dates/milestones that are important to your business and your customers e.g.: big sales, offers, anniversary, conferences, special events you’re hosting, scheduled interviews etc.
2. Determine if there are special topics or themes you want to focus on for particular months or weeks e.g. if you’re a nutritionist January is the month to focus on starting a New Year’s eating plan, March is a great month for liver cleanses, November is a good time to share tips for managing diet during the holidays etc.
3. Come up with blog article topics for each month for as many articles as you plan on writing e.g. 4 articles per month. Based the articles on important dates/events and overall monthly or weekly themes.
4. Curate general social media posts based on each months’ theme and special events.  You can find quotes that support the theme, create special event posts based what you currently know (e.g. save the date…), and use your expertise to build a library of tips/comments based on the theme and events you’ve already determined.

Now that you have a solid foundation to ensure you remember to post important happenings and you have basic posts to support your goals each month, all you have to do is create the posts in each platform manually or using a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.  Then just add timely, relevant posts to supplement throughout the weeks and months to come.

Do you use an editorial calendar?  How has it helped you and what tips do you have to share?

Four Tips For an Effective Social Media Strategy

By Debra Zimmer, The Expert Marketing Coach and CWCC Member

Back when social media first hit the Internet, hardly anyone thought of it as a tool to help build business and increase customer sales.  It was used primarily for social interaction and connecting with friends from your past. These days, this platform is extremely powerful in business for staying in communication with existing customers and attracting new ones.

However, the key to being successful on social sites is to have a well-planned social media strategy in place. Below are four tips that will help you organize your own strategy.

Determine your Social Media Goals and Objectives

You need to have well defined goals and objectives for your social marketing campaign. Your goals are generally what you are looking to achieve in the long-term while your objectives are the short-term actions you implement daily to help you reach those long-term goals. Your objectives need to be aligned with your goals.

Define your Theme

If you have read the book, The Now Revolution, by authors Amber Naslund and Jay Baer, you will understand why defining your theme is so important. Your theme will determine what you want your audience to do.  This is typically three things:

1. Sales

2. Awareness

3. Loyalty

Both awareness and loyalty naturally lead to more sales, however, each campaign in your social media strategy should focus on just one. Simplicity and consistency are essential here.

Build Relationships – Stop to Listen

Social media is centered on maintaining relationships and building new ones.  Your social marketing efforts should be focused around these two aspects.  It should not be all about you. You need to be listening to your potential customers and not just talking to them. If all you are doing is talking to them, they will get tired of simply being “talked to” and your campaign will not be a success. You build relationships with your customers by genuinely listening to them.

Be a Power User

A “power user” is an individual who is extraordinarily active in the social media community and has more of a significant effect on the members than the average user. Power users have more influence because they build honest and strong relationships with their followers, share valuable content and do not self-promote excessively.  They actively build up a prominent social status in the social community.

In the end, not everyone’s social media strategy is going to look the same and results will always be different.  Just remember, it takes time and consistency to start reaping the rewards. Please contact us to learn more information on building a strong social media campaign to build relationships and increase sales.

 

Debra Zimmer is an MBA, Certified Executive Mastermind Coach, and Certified Inbound Marketer. Your Virtual Chief Marketing Officer and Social Media Strategist providing Entrepreneurs, Experts and Executives with the Strategies, Systems and Support to Focus Your Brilliance and Magnify Your Impact!! Find out more here.

How Does Your Company’s Brand Measure up?

By Diana Cordova, Social Media and Content Marketing Consultant

The job of your company’s brand is to get recognition.  That means your target audience is clear about your value proposition and knows your company when they see it.  Consistency drives this recognition.

To build consistency, all marketing platforms and material carry the same general look and theme – they all tell the same story.  Messaging, tag line, graphics, voice, social media accounts, website, collateral and even customer facing staff (think friendly, whimsical Disney employees or happily hopped up on caffeine Starbucks baristas) all clearly reflect your brand.

After all, your brand is your company’s personality, and personalities don’t change.  They may evolve or get a visual face-lift from time to time, but the basic core remains.  Great examples are Coca Cola, Nike and Apple.

Having a strong, consistent brand is important for all companies, not just behemoths like Nike.

So how about your brand?  Does it have one, well-defined personality that’s reinforced everywhere, or is it hiding behind multiple personalities? Review the below list and find out.

Target Customer – Do you know who wants and needs your product or service?  Once you do, you can shape your messaging for your ideal customer, choose colors and graphics that will appeal to them and determine which social media sites to find them on.

Logo – Are you using your logo everywhere, all the time?  Your logo is the most prominent, visual representation of your brand.  If it’s simple yet stands out, it’s likely a winner. Consider the Starbucks logo, the Nike swoosh and Apple’s apple.  They aren’t complicated, and the minute you see them you recognize the brand.

Tagline –Does your tagline communicate your brand’s proposition in a simple, unique way?  Is it memorable?  Great examples are:  Apple – Think Different, SPANX – “Don’t worry, we’ve got your butt covered!” American Express – Don’t leave home without it.  All evoke an emotional response and convey the brand’s personality.

Value Proposition/Promise  – Is your brand focused on the value your customers gain from the products, services or experience you offer?  Hone in on the unique tangible and intangible benefits, and that’s your value proposition. All of your messaging should point back to this.

Voice/Messaging – Have you identified your brand’s voice?  Is it casual, quirky, irreverent, formal, funny, silly, dignified or professional? Identifying your brand personality will determine the voice on your website, ads and social media.  It will inform your graphics and how you speak to customers.  It’s a touch point to insure you have consistent messaging across all platforms.

Brand Standards/Guidelines – Is the criteria for your brand documented? This includes general color palette, approved font, what colors the logo can be represented in, different version of the logo, tagline, trademark, voice, punctuation etc.  This will enable you to maintain consistency even if your marketing person or team changes.

How’d you do?  If you checked off each one, you likely have a distinct personality and the basics of a clear, consistent brand.

Remember, consistency leads to brand recognition.  Over time that recognition will allow your target customers to feel like they know you. Once they know you, they’ll begin to trust you. That’s exactly what you want; because ultimately, we buy from people and companies we know, like and trust.

Got brand advice or perhaps brand issues?  Leave a comment below with your best branding practices or any questions you have about branding.

Branding: An Inward-Outward Point of View

By Debbie Josendale, President of 3C Marketing Group, LLc and CWCC Member

Recently, a client called me in a panic.  Hardly able to breathe, she said, “How am I going to compete?  My competitors seem to be Doctors, and I only have my MSW.  What am I going to do…I have to make a living?”

If you’re in the business of marketing and selling a service, you may have experienced similar moments of distress.  Many service providers find that they look and sound like all the others in their field.  They’re often unsure of how their service offering is really different from anyone else’s.

Two keys to successful branding are the ability to define and articulate your distinct value and then connect that message emotionally to your target market.

The Branding Challenge for Service-Based Businesses

The challenge for service-based businesses is that most branding and marketing programs are based on the product-marketing model, which is outward facing. Your messaging and unique differences are built around external motivators or pain points that your perfect client is experiencing.

The problem with this approach is that you sound FAKE when you rattle off your unique difference and the value you provide.  Why?  Because your message doesn’t resonate with YOU!

Selling a service is often personal for you and your prospective buyer.  You’re emotionally involved in what you do and recognize the impact of the service provided to change individuals, companies and maybe the world.

When Your Message is Not Congruent You Work against Yourself

That‘s why it’s emotionally crushing when you can’t comfortably articulate your value in a way that resonates with you as well as your target market. You feel FAKE saying “you will make more money in less time, or your business will double, or your wrinkles will disappear” because the message is not connected to your deeper purpose.

The net result is that you end up working against yourself to attract new clients.  Neuroscience tells us we’re naturally wired to detect very small discrepancies in behavior.  Prospective buyers may not be able to put their finger on it, but they sense when you’re not “telling the truth.”  They will not buy from you because they do not trust you.

Inward-Outward Branding Builds Trust and Confidence

When you look inward, you discover your unique perspective, beliefs about what you do, how the service is delivered and the associated impact. Your distinct difference and value is found at the intersection of purpose, passion and market need…the Authentic You.

Inward-outward branding shifts your energy from timid to comfortable and confident.  When you talk about your value and service offerings, your verbal and non-verbal cues match. This creates congruency.

People feel brands and when they sense congruency, it leads to trust. The person “choosing” your business offering needs to feel “confident” they’ve made a good buying decision. And you must feel confident about your own value and deliverables, for the whole equation to work

Your Unique Difference Makes All the Difference

You might be interested to know what we discovered in completing the Messaging and Branding Module of the 3C MAP Marketing™ Method with the client mentioned at the beginning of this article. The inward part of the branding message happens through a guided interview and discovery process.  Then we interview clients to gain their perspective.

It turns out what she thought she was lacking, “I’m not a Dr.,” was the very thing her clients appreciated.  They felt she was more approachable and not thinking about their issue from only a clinical perspective. That combined with her real-world perspective and educational foundation was what they valued.

Whether you are a service-based company of one or many, give yourself a head start by branding from the inside out.  After all…your unique difference makes all the difference!

Based in Denver, CO, 3C Marketing Group, LLC specializes in the art and science of marketing professional services. We develop and execute integrated marketing systems that drive results for our clients.  Please visit our website at http://www.3CMarketingGroup.com to learn more.

The Loneliest Part of Your Brand

By Lori Dubois, Marketing and Branding Expert and CWCC Member

You’ve done your homework and carefully built your brand. You agonized over the right name and tagline for your business, invested the effort and money to develop a unique logo that represents you well, and clearly and narrowly defined your purpose and how you differ from your competitors. Have you given as much attention to thinking about how customer experience affects your brand?

While messaging is a critical piece of your brand, it only covers part of the equation. Words and messaging convey what you say about your company, including your name and tagline, mission statement, 30 second commercial, website content, and any other marketing messages. The reason customer experience is so important is because it encompasses what everyone else is saying about your company.

In a world where perception is reality, what you say doesn’t matter if your customer’s perception is something different. If you say you are faster, better, or less expensive, you better be ready to prove it. Especially with the influence of social media today, word spreads faster than ever before, and you might be amazed how much people seem to care about their customer experience, good or bad.

Customer experience includes customer service, but is much more than customer service alone. Customer service evokes images of retail clerks in front of a long line of customers returning merchandise, or a phone bank dealing with angry or frustrated customers. Customer experience is defined as any way someone interacts with your company brand:

• Seeing your advertising on TV, the internet, or in print
• Calling your accounting office to ask questions about an invoice
• Reading about another customer’s experience through a social media channel
• Talking to a sales rep from your company
• Observing how a company reacts to a blunder
• Visiting your website
• Watching an interview with a company CEO
• Any other opportunity to see or interact with your business directly or indirectly

When you think of all the ways your brand touches people, you quickly see the opportunities to build brand reputation or destroy it. When we start a new business, we want people to know about us. We want them to care. We should not be surprised when we see evidence of this happening. When we become more aware of the impact customer experience has on our brand, we discover the opportunity to focus on positive communication and strive to understand what our customers really want when they interact with us.

Lori Dubois owns Dubois Information, a marketing communications company helping small to medium sized businesses build a brand that tells their unique story in the right way to the right people using the right methods. Dubois Information works with business owners to communicate better with their clients and prospects through email marketing, newsletters, surveys, web content, video, and social media strategies. www.DuboisInformation.com, 303-221-1129

Build Your Brand with LinkedIn Company Pages

By Debra Zimmer, The Expert Marketing Coach and CWCC Member

Build Your Business Brand on LinkedIn with Company Pages.

LinkedIn has quietly been adding features to Company Pages. At first you could just get your company listed, as if in a big directory. Then they added the ability to create a company profile and add products. Then you could get those products reviewed. And now you can post status updates and engage with your clients.

So how is the best way to get started using these features to promote your business?

Well, as always, if you are a coach, consultant, trainer, healer, solopreneur or other helping professional, you will want to start building your brand with your profile. If you feel you’ve done that pretty well, you will want to branch out and add in the company pages.

Here’s how to get started, step-by-step:

1.To start you will want to create your company profile.

2.Then add some products or services.

3.Ask some of your past or present clients to write a review for your products. This creates “social proof” and adds to your company credibility. The more positive reviews, the more evidence potential clients have that you are likely to satisfy their needs as well.

4.When you add a product or service, you can then share it to your status update, your groups or your connections. Here is a new piece of content that you can share with others to get some buzz going.

5.When you create the product or service, you can create a promotion to go with it. The promotion shows up in the bottom right side bar. Its a great opportunity to add photos or video to promote a program or launch.

6.The newest addition to the company page is the addition of the status update. This lets you get Facebook-like interactions with your LinkedIn followers. The downside right now is that the integration with automation tools like Hootsuite is not yet available. So you would have to manually post every update yourself or outsource your social media. Personally, I’m going to wait until the automation tools become available.

7.Optional: Run a paid advertisement. This will get you visibility amongst your target demographic fast.

So that’s it. It’s pretty easy to get started using Company Pages on LinkedIn.

Let me know below how it goes for you and if you have any tips to offer others who are starting out.

Debra Zimmer is an MBA, Certified Executive Mastermind Coach, and Certified Inbound Marketer. Your Virtual Chief Marketing Officer and Social Media Strategist providing Entrepreneurs, Experts and Executives with the Strategies, Systems and Support to Focus Your Brilliance and Magnify Your Impact!! Find out more here.