Social Media Is Your Online Marketing Strategy

Orem ELP Members were rewarded with an enlightening  presentation on the necessity of making Social Media a key part of your online marketing strategy. Bill Misrasi, a master marketer, has built 6 businesses in the past and is currently building 6 more. His focus for 20 years has been to use the current electronic technology to build local business, because he firmly believes our society is our local community.

Interruption Marketing–No Longer Effective

He pointed out that business had been driving the marketing message with their model of interruption marketing—shove their message in the prospect’s face—for the last 40 years. But now that is all changing, business is no longer in the driver’s seat—the customer is. The natural community is taking charge of the technology and using it for their societal purposes—using Social Media to connect with each other and to find out about products and services they want. These consumers are literally pulling the business community into the technology environment. Business people who don’t “get it” will be left behind. Consumers are tired of being hyped. They want business people to build a marketing and sales strategy that puts them in the center of the picture.

Traditional Advertising Ignores The Consumer

Consider this statistic. 97% of businesses that are struggling to get traffic to come to their doors through traditional advertising fail within the first five years. “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” –Craig Davis. We need to be in the position to show up in the local search engines online. 75% of all users are using there smart phones and PCs to search for local products and services online first before they enter the store to purchase. If you, as a business, do not have an effective presence where your customers are searching, you won’t gain their business.

The Consumer is Driving the Marketing Model

The internet IS THE CONSUMER’S-FIRST SHOPPING POINT—it’s consumer driven. 94% of all people send and read email; 87% use a search engine to find information; 75% do product research using the internet; 75% get their news online; 72% use it for fun and to pass the time; 65% buy a product online; 61% use it for social networking—often to tell about a product or service they purchased; 59% look for how-to information and 32% rate a product or service using Social Media. Our society is driven by the ability to move at our own pace. When I find, on the internet, which of my local businesses has the product I’m looking for right now, I can go get it from them right now.

Inbound Marketing Works

Marketers are realizing this and the big ones are shifting their budgets away from interruption marketing toward inbound marketing. B2B companies are placing products and services where their customers are looking. This earned media brings customers to you. Google is indexing this earned media instead of the PPC media. Paid searches are way down. Organic searches are way up.

When you get into the inbound, social network marketing your costs plummet. In many instances, it can be almost free instead of the $20,000 or more you used to spend for outbound marketing. Currently the average cost per customer for outbound marketing is $373, for inbound marketing it’s $143 or less. Inbound marketing generates additional revenue. Businesses refusing to switch their marketing to inbound will not survive.

Let Your Customers Find You Using Social Media Marketing

Show your products online so shoppers can research and then go to your store, whether online or a brick and mortar store. Twitter is where a lot of pre-shopping is done. People share their good and bad experiences with others on Twitter, and it’s searchable. Just type in a keyword—the item you’re searching for–and it comes up with all these statements on the product or service. People read and trust these customer reviews over your product advertising. The consumer can also read blogs, which also are searchable, which are their next choice for information about products and services. Then they check out other Social Media to get additional information. If you are blogging about your products and services and use Twitter and Facebook to share your information about your products or services, your customers will see it. They will then show up at your website store or your place of business in the community.

High SEO Rankings Result From Social Media Marketing

It is crucial that you rank high in the search pages. And you will if you have a presence in social media and your social media sites are linked to your website. 70% of these linked searches are organic. People don’t care to access paid advertising. They don’t trust it. Google only indexes 50-60% of the pages on the web. And most of those pages are organic. Companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages. SEO works really well if you are positioned right. Having activity on your site is the key. So make sure you have a blog attached to your site and that you have links back to your website from as many social media sites that relate to your product or service as you can. There are 25 different categories of social media. Not all are relevant to you. Find the ones that are relevant and link back from them. For instance, you can place articles you’ve written on Ezine sites that fit you and link back to certain pages on your website and blog. All this activity, over time, will raise your site in the rankings. Your goal is to get yourself on that first searched page for your keyword search. And make sure it’s a keyword that customers use by checking Google Analytics, Keyword Tool.

Other Social Media Methods Helping Rankings

Creating e-courses is another way to socialize as well as market a product. Become a part of a group and contribute content to answer questions with links back to your website for additional information. Start a group. Be an active member of a forum. Collaborate with other users who are marketing related products or services. The key to successful marketing in today’s marketplace is to socialize using the Social Media sites.

A Place to Maximize Social Media Marketing

Bill Misrasi is the owner and promoter of City Clickers. City Clickers is one solution to getting a strong Social Media presence on the internet. You can put your business on City Clickers free and be seen by all your customers in your database as well as all the other businesses’ customers of your local business community that are on City Clickers. They promise that they “can help you reach over 2 million potential customers multiple times per month or target thousands just in your local community market place every month.” You can register free at www.cityclickers.com. It’s easily the best way to market using social media.