Social media and email marketing are powerful tools for reaching new customers and prospects, but using them effectively requires a shift in perspective.
Kevin B. Jennings, owner of Junction 32, discussed this topic on this episode of One Next Step and shared some practical tips for making the most of your social media presence, measuring your marketing success, and helping people transition from followers and subscribers into customers.
If you’re a business owner who’s struggling to get traction with social media and email marketing, this episode is full of great advice on what to do and how to start.
Dreams are about possibilities, but ambition is dreams with drive.
Drive typically starts with a place of pain knowing your current situation is something you’re not OK with.
You must be willing to make a shift to make a change happen. To accomplish your dreams, you must back them with ambition.
When you start to make these changes, you start to have more opportunities in revenue and business – and you probably already have what it takes to start making your dreams a reality.
Through social media and email marketing, we have direct-, interest- or permission-based access to prospects and customers.
Your audience has chosen to follow you or give you their email address. This form of marketing is something that people are more receptive to accepting — and it’s also a much more affordable option.
The ROI is so much better because the cost is so much more affordable. This makes email marketing and social media so powerful for small businesses. Your audience grows to trust you when they’ve chosen to follow you and see your content.
A helpful analogy for social media is to view it as a party.
When you’re invited to a party and given a short list of details from the host, you begin to make assumptions about the general theme and vibe. You may even start to brainstorm what to wear or what to bring.
If you want to maximize your ability to enjoy the party and connect with others, you have to follow the “rules” of the party.
Similarly, the social platform is the host and you follow along in order to have a good experience and make connections. You post at a time that is best for your following, you interact with your audience, and you may even share helpful content to others.
Once you begin to connect with these people online, you begin to invite them to your own party by way of building your email list and potential clients.
At that point, and once you feel like you know these people more, you start to see that social media can operate like a real relationship would offline.
Be a party go-er, and be a party throw-er. Meet people where they are, connect with them, and invite them into your community.
Because of interruption-based marketing, business owners are used to being able to interrupt and get a response quickly – instead of moving at the speed of trust.
Instead, many businesses try to skip the dating process of social media marketing.
Think about it: You don’t meet someone and exclaim that they’re awesome, that the two of you should marry, and that they should give you their money.
So when people are paying you in multiple forms of currency, such as attention, information, anonymity, compensation, and reputation, you should be noting which people are paying you attention, giving you their information, giving you their money, and how many people are referring you to others.
This data then aligns up with social media followers, web traffic from social media, email subscribers, and customers.
These are granular metrics but priceless when determining how to best engage – and ultimately connect – with your audience.
Identify what you want to happen.
A lot of business owners don’t need social media for revenue. But most businesses need social media for online credibility. Social media can strengthen your audience’s confidence and reduce their feeling of risk.
Some incremental steps to do this include …
A BELAY Social Media Manager may be the one thing you need to start growing your business through social media and email.
Don’t miss any other episodes of our podcast, One Next Step. We provide our listeners with successful tips that will turn into small steps that will propel you towards big business.