Before you can implement a social “strategy,” you have to create one.
Facebook is not a strategy. LinkedIn is not a strategy. Twitter is not a strategy. These are only tools.
Way to many individuals and large corporations spend a tremendous effort building their Facebook Likes, Friends, Twitter Followers and their LinkedIn connections only to find that there isn’t any ROI. They’ve built their crowd, they have been posting, tweeting, and updating their status, but aren’t seeing any increase in their revenue. So, they immediately blame social media.
If you suddenly ran out and spent $100k on print ads with no strategy, or the same amount of money on a radio or television campaign and had no message, there would be no response. No ROI.
With all campaigns, you need to have a purpose, a call to action, and something that is measurable.
Think Strategically First. Then Think Tactically.
Many marketers feel that when it comes to social and digital media strategies, the best way to begin by choosing the tool they will use, whether that tool is LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Choosing a tool then attempting to build a strategy around that tool is not the way to begin.
Marketing isn’t merely the tools you use to advance your message, it’s the development of an over-arching successful, integrated, interconnected strategy – a strategy that utilizes tried-and-true traditional marketing methods as well as digital and social media.
Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are not strategies in your marketing arsenal, they are merely the tools through which you share your message. Gathering a large following of friends, business associates, and prospects to your social media platforms will certainly provide you exposure, but you need to have something to offer to keep them on the page… and eventually convert them into clients that will buy your product.
Do You Have A Conversion Strategy?
Why does your business have a social media presence? To sell product and services, right? In order to do that you need to convert your followers to customers so you can increase revenue – that is the ultimate goal. The same is true with traditional media – advertise to raise awareness and convert readers to customers.
Adding followers on Twitter, getting readers to your blog and gathering more likes on Facebook require different conversion strategies. The bottom line with your marketing efforts is this: How do I convert my Likes, followers and those who comment on my blog into revenue-producing customers?
Don’t use non-specific objectives such as “to build brand awareness” or ”to increase activity.”
As marketers, these are goals that we define when our marketing campaign has failed. Seriously, when your marketing is ineffective, you can just say, it DID increase brand awareness. But this is usually not a valid goal at the outset.
Be more specific. Define goals that can be measured. Specific goals such as “get free press coverage” or “increase likes on Facebook” are measureable, trackable activities. Put measurements of success on each goal and every goal or you will never know if you’ve achieved it.
Build Your Conversion Strategy
I’ve come up with a six-step program for a conversion strategy that includes the following:
- What is your measurable goal? Yes, you want to make money, but in which segment of your business? Which of your target markets will you pursue to increase your revenues and which products or services do you want to promote? What is your timetable and what revenue do you want to reach to achieve this goal?
- In which environment does your business reside? For example, starting a home construction business in 2009 at the height of the recession would not have been a good idea. Here are other environmental influences that could impact your success; the current economy; your competition; new technologies; federal, state and local regulations that impact your business; your demographic and its confidence in the economy; are there environmental or health trends that impact your goods or services; finally, the customers that you’re targeting need to be ready to buy and more specifically ready to buy from you.
- How can your brand stand out from the competition? What can you do “better, faster and cheaper” than they can? What is important to your customer and how can you become the go-to provider?
- You need to reach your target audience in a way that won’t break the bank. Before you budget for print ads or flyers, you need to understand if those efforts will reach your target audience. Is your audience heavily influenced by, and involved in, social media? If so, they may never see your print ad or flyer. Knowing where your audience “lives” will help target your marketing efforts.
- What tools can you utilize to gain the greatest impact? Once you know your audience, you can determine whether an ad in a local newspaper or radio station will reach them. You will want to look at a fusion of traditional, digital or social media and gauge your results.
- What message are you sending? When you remember that the tools you choose are merely the vehicles that will carry your message, you need to know what words to use on those vehicles. Make promises to your clients that address a want or need you’ve uncovered and let them know why your company can provide address that need better than the competition.
Taking time now to understand these six steps and to put measurable, actionable goals in place and will help you formulate your strategy for converting contacts into buyers.
Lon Safko is an internationally-recognized speaker and social media thought-leader. He is also the author of The Social Media Bible & The Fusion Marketing Bible