Marketing Strategy in Social World
Let’s face it, we all use some kind of social network and feel to be connected with rest of the community. Are we indeed connected and benefiting from the social world. And if we are not, how should companies build their marketing strategies that will facilitate and result in true social experience. We must understand that following someone at Twitter, adding a Facebook friend or making connection at Linked In doesn’t really help you build that relationship at a personalized level. If you are familiar with multi channel marketing campaigns other than social media, you know companies have focused on segmentation and personalization of their target consumers as well as the actual content / information delivered. So what do we need to know when adding social media as one of the marketing channels and how do we make that connection.
There are no magic potions are mathematical formulas that spell out all the nuts and bolts required to put together a succesful social marketing strategy. But certainly there are some basic principles that followed can help strategist to formulate a campaign that can produce effective results.
Principle Rule 1: Listen to your social voices (not the dog barking)
It’s not as simple as blasting off a email campaign from a researched list or just putting together some online ads and banners. This is an act of patience and indulgence at personal level. Listening is a true art and most successful speakers will tell you that. In this case, understand the consumer wants and needs as they are not the same. This will help you in building relationship and allow you make the connection at personal level.
Principle Rule 2: Make your connection
Reach out to your target audience with personalized messages that will catch their attention. The message can be a catch phrase, a simple image or just a note that makes that initial contact. This time the connection is listening back to you. There are no actions yet but the fact that your voice has been heard makes the connection.
Principle Rule 3: Interact with your connection
Provide your connections with the information that caught their attention. This can be a single step or in some cases multi step process. Interaction can be form of a direct conversation or through interactive channel. This is when responses are exchanged and we move beyond just listening to building relationship.
Principle Rule 4: Colloborate with your social network
Final and the most important step in your marketing strategy. Begin to engage with your customer. Whether it is a business or a personal transaction of services/products, design your solution to gear towards a personalized campaign. The success can be measured once the engagement is put in place. Remember, once you have a true social connection and consumer relationship at personal level, your strategy and campaign will certainly result in higher ROI and profitability (however you measure it whether it is in sales, satisfaction or anything else).
Just remember to follow the basic principles when channeling social media for your next marketing campaign. There are lot more things that can make the strategy work and campaign effective such as right CRM, technology, analytics and branding strategy. This article os not focusing on it.
Please let me know if I there are other basic rules that needs to be added.
