Читать книгу The Zen of Social Media Marketing - Shama Hyder - Страница 9
Оглавление“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.”
Jim Rohn
BEFORE WE LOOK AT ONLINE MARKETING, let’s look at traditional or offline marketing. This will help set the foundation for marketing on the internet. Before the advent of the internet, there were predominantly three main ways to market. These traditional marketing avenues were print, TV, and radio. Print included newspapers, magazines, Yellow Pages, posters, billboards, and even direct mail. Radio and TV included commercials and spots or segments. Traditional marketing worked very well for many years for three main reasons.
REASON 1: Marketing was a one-way street. Companies talked at the consumers, and this was expected because there really was no viable way for customers to talk back. Sure, word of mouth existed. However, you would realistically only tell Joe, Sally, and maybe Mary (if she was in town) before moving on. Moreover, it took a long time for word to get around. So, basically, if the nice-looking lady on television said the laundry detergent was amazing, we believed it. Today, we can go on a company’s Facebook page, find them on Twitter, or even comment on their blog. Customers can—and are—talking back!
REASON 2: We were all the same, more or less. Let’s face it! We wore the same clothes, had the same habits, and enjoyed the same activities. It was easier for marketers to target buyers because they knew exactly who and where they were. Targeting a woman in her thirties? She was most likely a married mother of two and a stay-at-home mom. She put her family first and most likely went to church on Sundays. Try targeting a woman in her thirties today. She may be a stay-at-home mom to two kids and go to church on Sundays. But she may just as likely be a single woman focused on her career who enjoys hiking on the weekends. Today, you need a multipronged approach. You can’t reach a demographic through one channel. You have to reach people through the channel of their choice.
REASON 3: We were less tired—and a little less jaded. At first, we believed the man on television when he said that his product could eliminate any stain. We believed it when the woman who reminded us of Grandma said the cookies tasted freshly baked. We believed it all—for a while. We were so transfixed by the well-written copy in the magazine or the flashy ad on TV. Today, we are a lot savvier. We check reviews, leave comments, and demand trial versions.
Does this mean traditional marketing is over? Not at all. It has, however, evolved. The internet has woven its way through every form of traditional marketing. When was the last time you got a piece of direct mail that didn’t have a website address for you to visit? Every morning I listen to NPR (National Public Radio), and every morning the broadcasters invite me to tweet them my questions or fan their Facebook page.
What is online marketing? Online marketing is the art and science (dare I say the Zen?) of leveraging the internet to get your message across so that you can move people to take action. Whether that action is donating their time to your cause or buying your product or service, the goal of marketing has always been the same—to get people to take action. The tools just keep changing.
If online marketing is the act of leveraging the internet in general to get your message across, social media marketing is the act of leveraging specifically social media platforms (places where people connect and communicate) to promote a product or a service to increase sales.
The social media movement has provided the business owner powerful tools for reaching thousands of prospects and clients at the click of a mouse. However, without a strong business strategy and knowledge of online marketing, these tools are often used in vain. Success in this new media requires you to lead with a strong business mind-set.
To that end, ask yourself:
• What exactly am I trying to accomplish with social media and why?
• What are my readers’ most pressing challenges, and how can I help them overcome these?
• What are the most effective delivery tools for my messages?
• How can I build enduring relationships and turn strangers into lifetime customers?
Mitch Meyerson,
author of Mastering Online Marketing and eight other books (www.MitchMeyerson.com)
First I want to share with you a simple framework for marketing online. This framework is necessary because social media marketing is not a stand-alone process or an outcome. So, before we delve into the specifics, we have to take in the big picture.
Successful online marketing can be broken down into three distinct components. I like to use the acronym ACT to describe the process.
The ACT Methodology
A is for Attract. To attract means to get attention or stand out. Practically, this means attracting traffic to your website—your main online marketing tool.
C is for Convert. Conversion happens when you turn a stranger into a consumer or customer. And there is a difference between the two! A consumer may take in your information or even sample your product, but he or she may not always buy. That’s okay! Over time, that consumer may become a customer. The more expensive a purchase is, the longer it may take. This means that you constantly have to work to convert people into consumers and customers.
T is for Transform. You transform when you turn past and present successes into magnetic forces of attraction.
Let’s use Sue as an example. Sue sells quilts on the internet. So do hundreds of other people. How can Sue bring people to her website? If she has a Facebook page, she could create an album of her quilts. Jane, a Facebook friend of Sue’s, looks at the pictures and instantly thinks of getting one for her granddaughter. She sees that Sue has placed a link to her website right below the pictures, so she clicks over to her site. Sue has successfully ATTRACTED Jane to her website.
With social media, you are the publisher! The sooner you realize you are a publisher, the more successful your business will be. Wouldn’t it be great if people relied on you and your business to help them in their careers and personal lives? It’s possible, but you have to start thinking differently about the way you market. Publishing valuable, relevant, and compelling information targeted to your customers and prospects is the answer. What’s your expertise? How does that expertise relate to your customers’ pain points? Then create the story and reach people where they are—through email, ebooks, blogs, social media, and more. Then watch the magic happen: you become the authority for that niche. You are the expert, and you may never have to actively sell again!
Joe Pulizzi,
coauthor of Get Content. Get Customers
Once Jane visits Sue’s website, she takes a closer look at the quilts. She finds one that she thinks her granddaughter would just love as a holiday gift. She makes a note to herself that she will make sure to come back closer to Christmas. Now, what are the chances that Jane will actually be back? Very slim. Luckily, Sue has a newsletter sign-up box on her home page. She offers Jane some tips on quilt making in exchange for her email address. Jane gladly gives it; she is CONVERTED from a stranger to a consumer. Now, Sue can email Jane whenever she has something exciting to share—a new shipment, some more tips, or even news of a sale. Come Christmas, Jane receives an email from Sue reminding her to get her Christmas shopping done—and Jane buys. She is CONVERTED from a consumer into a customer.
Jane loves the quilt she receives from Sue! It even has a nice note. Jane’s granddaughter loves the quilt just as much. In fact, she drags it around the house. It has become her favorite blankie. Jane just has to take a picture and send it to Sue. Sue takes this picture and shares it on her company blog. She TRANSFORMS the success with a customer into an attraction tool. She explains how each quilt leads to long-lasting memories and how happy it makes her to see her customers happy. Enter Don. Don has been thinking about purchasing a quilt for his own daughter but wasn’t sure if she would really enjoy it. He just stumbled across Sue’s blog after his wife forwarded him an article in which Sue was featured. Seeing Jane’s granddaughter’s smiling image with the quilt makes Don smile. He thinks, “If that little girl loves it so much, perhaps mine will, too.” He also notes how much Sue seems to care about her customers. He buys a quilt instantly.
AHA! Zen Moment
In this book I’ll be using the words “customer” and “client” interchangeably to refer to both, because there isn’t much difference between them when it comes to using social media marketing techniques: you can ATTRACT, CONVERT, and TRANSFORM both with the same methods!
Through the ACT process, Sue ensures that she will never be short of customers. It is a simple yet effective process.
Start thinking about all your online marketing tactics as falling into at least one of these categories. Whenever you think about marketing, ask yourself this question: Am I using this technique to Attract, Convert, or Transform? Keep in mind that there are plenty of instances in which an online marketing tactic can perform multiple functions. We will cover these instances later.
Attract
Nowhere is social media marketing more successful and useful than in the “attracting” phase of online marketing. During the attraction phase, you are trying to drive traffic to your site and stand out from the masses.
We will look at the how of driving traffic later in the book. For now, let’s focus briefly on what you need in order to make your product or service attractive online.
This may seem like a detour from social media marketing, but it is in fact the framework you absolutely must have to attract people to your product or service.
What do you need to attract prospects online? A great BOD!
• Brand: If your brand could be summed up in one word, what would it be? I will use my company, The Marketing Zen Group, as an example. Our clients use many words to describe us, but at the end of the day, the best phrase is “full service.” We constantly aim to provide anything our clients may need relating to digital marketing and PR.
• Outcome: What’s the outcome you help clients achieve? Not the process you use but the final result. Sum it up in one line: Our company helps businesses grow by leveraging the internet. Simple. We may create websites and conduct social media trainings and so on, but those are all part of the process. We do those things to accomplish a goal. That goal is to help our clients make more money. That goal is our outcome.
• Differentiator: What makes you inherently different from your competitors? The online marketing field is a competitive one. However, most marketing companies only offer one piece of the puzzle. They may offer graphic design, or optimize websites, or focus on simply consulting. There isn’t anything wrong with this approach, but this is where our company, The Marketing Zen Group, decided to stand out. We recognized that many clients out there didn’t have the time or in-house resources to handle their web marketing. Moreover, they didn’t want to hire and manage multiple companies and consultants. So, we offered to literally take over web marketing for our clients. In essence, we offered to become their online marketing department and drive inbound leads. It has been an amazing differentiator for us! So, your differentiator, in other words, is simply what makes you stand out.
I can’t stress enough how important these principles—these basic building blocks—are to online marketing and social media marketing in particular. There is no lack of information and noise out there. As consumers, we are constantly inundated with data. It is a continual grand bazaar. If you don’t have the right elements, you can’t stand out from the noise. If you don’t stand out, you can’t attract people to do business.
The branding principle “everything communicates” has only been magnified by the rise of social media.
To be effective in this space, you have to be clear about what you want to be known for—what your brand stands for. And then, you have to be vigilant about building an integrated marketing presence that supports your identity consistently. Due in part to the blurring of personal and professional identities online, you can “leak” messages that are incongruent with your brand. Frustrated offenders might say, “I didn’t want that to communicate!” But it’s not our choice; the experience of the target audience determines our identity, and they decide what to include as an element of our brand.
From its essence to its look and feel, business model, affiliations, and so on, it has never been more important to thoroughly plan your brand.
Samantha Hartley,
Enlightened Marketing (www.EnlightenedMarketing.com)
The #1 reason people fail at social media marketing is that they don’t have a solid foundation. They don’t have a brand, they don’t understand the outcome they provide, and they have absolutely no way of differentiating themselves from the competition.
Social media is the ultimate amplifier. If you have a good product or service, it will be amplified until it is perceived as great. If you have a shoddy product to begin with, that will also be amplified. Think about when you speak to your friends. Do you tell them that a restaurant you liked was good or do you say it was amazing? Inside each of us is a storyteller. We like to amplify. Social platforms and the internet in general allow us to do that. They are a megaphone for your message. The people who consistently do well using social media are the ones who were already doing well to begin with. The medium simply amplified their success.
Convert
So, what happens after you attract clients or customers? If they are an ideal fit, they convert. I say if they are an ideal fit because not everyone you attract will be. In our story earlier, Sue attracted Jane, who was an ideal fit. She was looking for quilts to buy. Let’s say Sue also attracts Edgar to visit her site because he likes the pictures of the quilts on her Facebook profile. However, he doesn’t have any use for a quilt; he just thinks they are pretty. He may never buy. And that’s okay. You want to convert the Janes out there, not the Edgars.
As I mentioned previously, conversion can happen in one of two ways: (1) a stranger turns into a consumer, or (2) a stranger turns into a client or customer.
People become consumers when they subscribe to your blog, get on your newsletter list, or merely like your Facebook page (more on this later). They are consuming your information. At this point, they have converted. They are no longer strangers.
Why is this important? Even if they aren’t paying for the content they’re consuming, they are still being exposed to your company and your brand. There is an old marketing adage that says a person must come into contact with your brand seven times before he or she will make a purchase. Seven times!
Think about the last time you went grocery shopping at a big chain store. Chances are that there was some table setup that allowed you to sample a product—whether it was a new juice or old-fashioned jam. Studies show that when people sample, they are more likely to buy! This same “sample table” concept also works online. Offering people a sample of your work—whether through written content, pictures, or videos—can also lead them to buy from you.
Ideally, the formula works like this:
Consumption of Valuable Content + Time = Client
Time is a variable. Some people may buy right after sampling your product or service. Others may need much longer. Some of our clients received our newsletter for over a year before they decided to become clients. And not everyone should turn into a client. You only want those who are a perfect fit. The more qualified the buyer, the fewer the returns.
Consumers and business buyers want to make up their own minds about what they need without interference from noisy marketers. In fact, by the time they are ready to talk to you, they will be armed with information about your company, its people, and its products.
Benefit from this new buyer behavior by engaging with them as they search for answers. Deliver content that is relevant and compelling in their search for solutions. You can do this before they ever call you or walk through your front door.
You become the expert your future buyers can count on. Your content engenders a trusted relationship that makes it easy to buy from you. That’s what content marketing is all about.
Newt Barrett,
coauthor of Get Content. Get Customers
How Does Social Media Marketing Fit When It Comes to Conversion?
Let’s be completely honest about what social media rarely does—lead to instant clients. For example, if you are looking to put up your LinkedIn profile and immediately get swamped by client requests, you may be disappointed. I won’t say that social media marketing doesn’t ever lead directly to clients because it does happen, but this should not be your goal. If you want to gain clients quickly, there are better ways of achieving it.
What social media is great at is turning strangers into consumers. It’s the perfect channel for allowing people to get a taste of your product or service—it’s sampling made easy.
AHA! Zen Moment
Social media marketing works best as a tool for attracting traffic and attention. It doesn’t work as well for converting strangers into clients. It’s better suited to converting strangers into consumers (i.e., blog readers or newsletter subscribers), if simply because “free” is an easy sell. Free works! And over time, it can and will lead to business.
What’s the Best Conversion Tool?
Your website! There is no getting around this one. You shouldn’t be engaging in social media marketing if you don’t have a website first. Every time I speak on the subject of social media marketing, someone inevitably asks me, “Can’t I substitute a social media profile (say, on Facebook or LinkedIn) in lieu of a website?” The answer is always no.
Why should you have your own website and not depend on social media profiles?
• You own your website. You don’t own your social media profiles. Your profile (and your hard-earned contact list) is owned by the social media site itself. If it goes “poof” tomorrow, then so does your online presence.
• Social media profiles are limiting. You can convey only so much information on your profile. Although it may (and should) intrigue someone, it isn’t enough to make a sale. Remember, social media is not a selling tool! It is an attracting tool.
Transform
Once you have mastered the art of attracting and converting, you must transform your successes into attraction magnets. This brings the entire online marketing process full circle.
People, especially strangers, crave social proof. Social proof is the theory that we are more likely to do something when we see others doing it. This applies even more when the others in question are similar to us. We often decide what to do (including whether to buy) based on what others are doing. This isn’t the only factor in our decision making, but it is a major one.
Social media is built on social proof. Because of this, social media is a great way to transform past successes into new attention for your company.
There are two parts to transforming:
1. You have to do a good job. If your service or product just doesn’t deliver, you are out of luck. You can’t transform a bad experience into an attraction tool. Let’s say you sell a blender and it breaks. The customer tries to return it, but your overworked employee says you just don’t take returns. Sorry. And good day! This is not an experience you want amplified. On the other hand, if you do a great job, it makes for the perfect story. One of our clients is K9Cuisine.com. They sell premium dog food online. Nothing too glamorous, but their customer service is amazing. They go above and beyond just delivering an order. If a client orders regular shipping, they upgrade it for no extra charge. If a customer says his dog didn’t like a specific brand, they swap it out and help him find something that his dog will like. They’re more than just a dog food seller; they become trusted dog nutrition advisors who care about your four-legged friend.
2. You have to use your success to attract more success. This goes beyond just regular testimonials. This involves telling your customers’ story—the story of what they achieved through your service or product. When K9Cuisine.com receives an email thanking them for helping Jack, the loved golden retriever, start eating again after a long illness, they ask the customer if they can share their story with others. The story then makes its way onto their Facebook page and into their tweets. Soon, lots of people know about how K9Cuisine.com helped Jack. Next time they think about Fido needing dog food, they will think about K9Cuisine.com. If they have a great experience, they may tell their friends. The cycle continues.
Traditional marketers didn’t worry about who controlled the message. Online marketers today engage an empowered customer. For this reason I ask my clients to keep two principles in mind at all times:
1. Make it easy to buy. This involves telling the right story, exposing the real benefits, and making your shopping cart a one-click affair. It helps keep you focused when you are creating your online presence and figuring out how you will construct your marketing message.
2. Pick tactics last. This ensures that you won’t get distracted by the latest shiny object fad before you have your essentials in place. Once you do, you can focus on picking the right tactics to really hear your customers.
Stephanie Diamond,
author of Web Marketing for Small Businesses
What Does Social Media Marketing Have to Do with This Step?
Everything! Whereas social media may not be ideal for converting strangers into clients, it’s an excellent platform for sharing stories. Stories establish your expertise, attract fresh consumers, and even help convert faster.
The following are possible tools for transformation:
• Testimonials from customers and clients
• Case studies that showcase how a customer found a solution to his or her problem (ideally the solution is your service or product)
• Video interviews with clients
• Audio interviews with customers
• Pictures of smiling clients with your products
AHA! Zen Moment
Social media platforms are a great way to showcase past and present success stories. By letting the customers speak for themselves, you can leverage social proof to attract more prospects.
Overview of Online Marketing Tactics and How They ACT (Attract, Convert, Transform)
The following table presents several online marketing methods and how well they accomplish each step of the ACT process. (Note: Search engine optimization [SEO] involves increasing the traffic to a website from search engines by causing the website to appear higher in a list of search results. SEO is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2.)
One-Minute Online Marketing Secret
Have you ever heard of putting strategy before tactics? A strategy is an overall plan. It is the big picture: what needs to be accomplished and why. Tactics, in contrast, address the when, where, and how. Tactics are the way you implement your strategy.
Strategy should always come before tactics. However, most people doing business online go about this backwards. I call this the “shiny toy syndrome.” They see the next cool networking site and join, or someone tells them they have to have a blog, so they start one only to abandon it after a month. I see people constantly chasing the next cool thing online without really knowing specifically what they want to accomplish. They may think, “I want to make money,” but don’t go further than that. And most importantly, because they don’t know what they want to accomplish, they don’t know how to measure the success of their tactics.
The net comprises a gazillion splinters, most of which are businesses trying to claim their spot. So social media doesn’t amount to a hill of beans unless what you’re promoting stands out in that crowded marketplace. Differentiation is key, and that is why nothing can get along in the land of social media marketing without a clearly defined, unique, “hooky” offer. This is actually the most important part of branding—not the clever name or snappy tagline, as most think. In fact, when I brand folks, the brand is added last and naturally tumbles out of the “hooky” offer. My intention in branding folks is always to extract what is truly unique, quirky, interesting, and relevant about them and their businesses and then roll that into the offer and consequently the brand. What’s hooky about you?
Suzanne Falter-Barns,
Get Known Now (www.GetKnownNow.com)
Are you trying to attract? Convert? Transform? Once you decide what your goal is, look at the preceding table to find a tactic that will help you achieve it. Then you’ll also know how to measure your success. For example, if you know that the ad you are going to put on Google is meant to attract, then you will measure the number of visitors to your site to gauge how successful your investment was. You won’t waste your time being frustrated that it didn’t lead to more direct sales. If you were using a tactic to convert, you would check the number of people who subscribed to your newsletter. (Hint: These subscribers would be considered consumers! Remember: Consumption of Valuable Content + Time = Client.)
Now that you have a solid understanding of how social media fits into the bigger scheme of things, let’s take a quick look at how to make the most of your ultimate conversion tool—your website!
