Small Business Marketing and Social Media Goals
We all know goals are a good thing to have, so why do we not do more to set and achieve goals?
Personally, my excuse has been that I don't want to set a "bad" goal. After all, if I don't know what's truly possible then how can I set a "reasonable" goal, right?
The best part about the answer to that question is that it's easy to understand. Social media isn't — is not — a brand new technology, system or marketing channel. All that kind of talk is just "emporer's new clothes."
For business owners, social media is your own, personal, private news service. It allows you to share useful information with your customers.
Let's say you own a hardware store and you have a few new products in your inventory. Naturally you're going to add those products to your weekly flyer or newspaper ad. You'll probably even give a couple of them top billing.
That's good. Your customers are used to seeing those ads so you should keep using them. But let's add Facebook to your marketing mix.
You sign up for a free account with Facebook and connect with a bunch of your friends and business colleagues. When the new products arrive, you can write a status update telling your friends. After the flyer comes out, you can write another update telling them to look for a coupon or special price.
Social media is really just a different way to communicate with people. It's more targeted than a flyer because the people you connect with on Facebook actually want to hear from you. A great plus to social media is that you can communicate with a big group of people - just like a flyer - but they get to respond individually.
You already know that getting someone to talk to you is a big part of developing customer loyalty.
So if social media is similar to other marketing methods, thinking of some goals for using it gets a lot easier, right? After all, there are really just three areas to improve in. You want to:
A. Increase the number of customers
B. Increase the average purchase value; or
C. Increase how often customers make purchases
Let's go back to your Facebook account and say that the "bunch" of friends and colleagues you connected with is 30 people. We'll also say that — because they're friends — they already shop in your store.
Use Facebook to tell your friends that you're trying to increase the number of people coming into your hardware store. (On the internet, this would be called Traffic Generation) Just write a status udpate something like this:
"Hi, All our Christmas decorations just arrived so we're putting up a tree in the store. Come on over Saturday morning (9 'til 2) and help us decorate the tree. Bring the kids and grandkids, too. Continued on the next pagePage 1 2
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