Social media marketing

Are You Missing The Key Element Of Marketing?

Jan 8, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Everyone is raving about how important is to include social media marketing in your marketing campaigns and it seems that most small businesses are starting to grasp this message. But there is another component of online marketing, which brings real measurable benefits to your business. I’m talking about email marketing.

Have you ever heard that to make money online you need to build your emailing list? You might say ‘I don’t have online business, so I don’t need this’, but am I right to say that you run various adds, promotions, sales, product launches and similar?

Email marketing is as important for online businesses as it is for any other physical store or service provider. Email marketing helps you build relationship, trust and loyalty with your subscribers. And once you gain that, you know your subscribers will buy products and services from you, not your competition.

Email marketing is also the cheapest and the most targeted form of marketing. Why?

For 2 reasons:

#1:

People who sign-up to your emailing list are already warm leads. This means they will highly likely buy from you in the future. Why? People will not give you their email address unless they think you have something valuable to them. This means that anyone who is on your list is a potential buyer and you know that because they expressed an interest in your business. You cannot get more targeted campaign than that.

This is further enhanced by possibility to collect data on how your subscribers behave, which helps you to refine your approach and messages.

A cost of running an email campaign is nothing comparing to any other form of marketing. With Aweber you can try your email marketing campaign for as low as $1.“I want to try it”

So why are so many small businesses still reluctant to use email marketing in their marketing strategy? The most common reasons are:

Reluctant to try new things
It takes too much time
It won’t work for me
It’s too complicated for me to set up
It’s too expensive

If you fall in to the first category – excuse me from being blunt – sooner or later you will be out of business. How we do business today is changing and unless you change with it, your future is not bright.

According to Aweber’s 2012 survey, “the most business owners said they spend between 1 and 3 hours a week on their campaigns.” With 77% of surveyed business owners stating that email marketing increases their profit, it is worthwhile finding that time.

Thirdly, if your clients are human, there is no reason why it won’t work for you. The question is; are you willing to give it a try to find out if email marketing works for you?

I accept that for some, technical tasks can be a bit daunting. You might not be up for learning how to set-up your email marketing campaign or you might not even know where to start.

That’s fine. I can help you with that.

“Yes, I need help with email marketing”

Programs such as Aweber really make email marketing a breeze. With auto-responding follow ups and drag-and-drop email templates sending messages is quick and easy.

I know that you can learn. So, once your email marketing technical parts are set up, I will show you exact steps how to use email marketing tools and support you until you are confident that you can do it on your own. Worth giving it a try? Get in touch.

As for the excuse that email marketing is too expensive, there are free email marketing software providers out there you can use. I personally use Aweber which is used by most online marketing gurus. Here you can Test Drive it:

Can You Have More Sales, Too?

Helping over 115,000+ businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.

I hope I gave you enough reasons why you should try email marketing or if you are already doing it, why you need to continue. But enough of me talking, let’s have a look what other 3000 small business owners and entrepreneurs have to say:

Data and infographic by AWeber

Share your thoughts in comments below or share it with your friends. Thanks

Why You Are Not Turning Facebook Fans Into Customers

Dec 4, 2012 By Tea Leave a Comment

When Facebook introduced new Timeline in March this year, the Facebook business page owners and marketers worried about the loss of the profile banners which have been widely used to promote businesses and display calls to action. While many are now using cover photo for such purposes it is against Facebook guidelines to display calls to action, contact details, price or purchase information or any Facebook features, such as “Like us” on you cove r photo.

If you are one of these people, you are risking your Facebook business page to be shut down. Imaging what would it mean for you to lose all you worked so hard for?

I know it’s frustrating that such prominent place, as the cover photo is, cannot be used as advertising space. But if you think about the purpose of Facebook, you will soon see why Facebook banned such use.

Having said that, there are ways how you can utilise cover photo to your benefits. You can either use it for your identification, promotion and direction of your visitors.

Identification

Cover photo is ideal to present your brand’s story or even products. Think about how you want visitors of your Facebook business page to recognise you, what do you want to be known by.

The key is to build up recognition of your brand. Once visitors become familiar and comfortable with your brand and your products, they will become your fans, customers and even brand advocates.

Promotions

Remember, calls to action are strictly forbidden but that doesn’t stop you from promoting your products, events, sale or discounts. Think of cover photo as a billboard, your prime advertising space, just without explicit mentioning prices or calls to action. You can still be creative, catchy and entertaining.

Direction

This strategy is useful if you want to draw your visitors’ attention to your custom tabs. While you cannot directly direct them using call to action phrases such as ‘enter competition’, ‘click on tab’, ‘sign-up’ or similar, you can direct them with a clever design of your cover photo that will draw visitors’ eyes to that section of your Facebook business page.

Whatever strategy you are currently using make sure you try others as well. Then test them to see which one engaged better with your audience. In marketing, testing is the most important part. Make sure you set up measurable objectives of your strategies, so that you will be able to objectively measure your results. If you don’t test, you will never know what works and want doesn’t. This might result in investing your energy, money and time doing wrong strategies.

So what’s not allowed in a cover photo:

Calls to action;
your contract information; e.g. phone number, website, email address…
price or purchase information;
reference to any Facebook features / actions e.g. “Like our page”

Facebook Cover photo should not:

infringe any 3rd party intellectual property,
be false, misleading or deceptive.

What is allowed is it that you use a space of 851x351pixels for promotion of your brand, your story, you product for engagement with your clients, brand recognition and sometimes just pure entertainment.

And if this article opened up your creativity or if you are using some other Facebook cover photo strategies, why not share them with others in comments below.

How Many Social Media Accounts Do You Own?

Oct 12, 2012 By Tea Leave a Comment

With a number of new social media platforms increasing every day, it is quite common that people feel overwhelmed and they end up not using any of them. Does this sound like you?

Or perhaps you are on the other side of the extreme and you hold multiple social media accounts. How many do you actually effectively use?

Social media is not about quantity but about quality. You can have presence on as many social media platforms as they are out there, but are you truly present if you engage with your fans every here so often? Can you truly communicate your message through odd posting once a week? Is this bringing any results for your business?

Multiple social media accounts need multiple time and resources to manage them efficiently. As a business owner you know that this equals costs. You also know that marketing is all about return on investment. So unless your marketing campaign has generated more revenue than costs, your return on investment will show as loss. And we want profit, don’t we?

Rule #1

To use social media efficiently you must get a grasp that it is a marketing tool that will grow your business, not a playground to catch up with your fans (this doesn’t prevents you to have fun with it). Once you make that switch in your thinking you will notice that you will need to adjust how you use social media to achieve the growth and positive return on investment.

Rule #2

You cannot be everywhere. You must decide which social media platform is right for your business and stick to only few of them to get it right.

So how do you decide which social media is right for you?

There is no golden rule and with time you might find that you prefer one over another.

A good start is to look at the nature of your business – do you offer services/products B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to customer) and based on that determine your social media priorities.

My favourite social media platforms, in a priority order for B2C business, are:

Facebook

An obvious one, because almost everyone you know has a personal Facebook account, which makes it a great tool if you have B2C business. Facebook is the most popular, very user friendly, highly customizable and effective tool for marketing.

You Tube

People prefer watching videos over reading content. A video with compelling, relevant content to your audience is a great way to build trust, engagement and following. You Tube channels can be branded to showcase your business and if created correctly, it becomes a virtual sales person working for you 24/7, greatly increasing lead generation for your business.

Twitter

It’s amazing that 140 characters can be such influential and powerful marketing tool. It can be used for both B2C and B2B businesses for driving traffic to your website or Facebook business page by sharing content and opinions. It enables businesses to appear human, quickly and effectively enhance customer service, public relations and business development. While it’s not so good for self-promotions, it’s very useful for market research, spotting trends and connecting with media.

One thing people love doing is looking at pictures and Pinterest is a perfect answer to engaging consumers visually. (Visual aspect is so important to us that even Facebook made the new Timeline design much more visual than it was before.) Pin (post) pictures of your products/services, share them and engage by commenting on others.

LinkedIn is great for networking and keeping in touch with your network, even when they change jobs. I think every business person (employed or business owner) should have personal business profile on LinkedIn. If you are in B2B selling, then LinkedIn must be your number one priority, as this is where you will find your customers. While a recent redesign of LinkedIn’s company pages is yet to show its full repertoire of benefits it is currently more suitable for larger companies.

All these social media platforms can be used for B2B business, however in this order of priority:

LinkedIn
Twitter
You Tube
Pinterest
Facebook

Whatever social media you choose to play with, remember that like anything else in life, it takes time to create a following but the rewards are worth your work. While there are tools and ways to speed up the process, be cautious of social marketing consultants who promise you success over night. Trust your story, share and engage with your fans and you will soon see your business grow.

Do You Need to Customize Facebook Business Page?

Aug 23, 2012 By Tea Leave a Comment

Facebook has been a leading social media platform for some time now and with growing numbers of businesses, large or small, starting to realise its potential, it’s becoming extremely important how you customize Facebook page.

Setting up Facebook business page might seem pretty straight forward; however with numbers of users growing each day, it is becoming more and more important to do these steps right so that your customers can find you.

Designing a custom Facebook fan page stretches far beyond good looking timeline cover photo and logo. Your custom Facebook fan page should communicate your company’s purpose, vision and branding.

A well customized Facebook business page will:

Tell a story of who you are
Engage your visitors
Achieve brand consistency
Introduce calls-to-action and
Build an active following

Whilst the (not so) new Facebook Timeline appears to be all about visuals, underneath lays an immense opportunity to spread and share your business’ story, engage with customers, potential prospects and to generate leads.

But before make things look pretty, it’s important to look at what is the purpose of your custom Facebook fan page. Think about what you wish to achieve with your Facebook business page. What is the purpose of engaging with your customers?

Is it to spread your message or is it about to ‘see and be seen’, or is it about generating leads?

A well customized Facebook business page should do all this – and if you do it right; you will notice that Facebook Timeline offers even better tools to achieve all these then the old Facebook layout.

The Facebook Timeline has a set of new features that affect how you can customize your Facebook business page. Some offer you more flexibility and some must follow specific guidelines. These are the areas you can customize on your Facebook business page:

Timeline Cover Photo
Your profile picture
Your URL
Views and Apps
How you wish to present your content, e.g post, milestones, events, questions
Adding various apps and tools

There are plenty of opportunities on your Facebook business page to infuse your brand and message.

To customize Facebook page all you need to do is:

1 – Familiarise yourself with new Facebook Timeline guidelines

This is a very important step. Facebook has a right to delete your account if you do not follow their guidelines. Imagine you worked hard to create your Facebook business page, you’ve created a good following and all this can go to waste because you didn’t care or had time to read the guidelines.

2 – Get creative juices flowing

This is the fun part. Be creative, engaging, put yourself in shoes of your followers. What would you like to see, hear and feel when visiting your Facebook business page?

3 – Allocate time and resources and get the job done

This might be the most challenging part for most small businesses; finding time and resources to make it all happen. Many start setting up Facebook business page yet they never finalise it. Having a Facebook business page that is not customized and optimized is worst then not having a page at all. Why?

Posting content without tools to harvest your hard work is simply wasting your precious time. On the other hand once fans decide your page is boring, it will take heaps of effort to persuade them to come back.

At Weblicious Solutions we are well aware that things look simple and anyone can do them. But we also know that running a small business has enough challenges already. We know you would rather concentrate on doing your core business – stuff you are good at – So why don’t you let us do the hard work for you. Send us an email or click here to find out how we can help you…

Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Social Media Marketing?

Aug 21, 2012 By Tea Leave a Comment

Let’s face it, it’s here, its importance and influence is rising each day and it’s not going to go away.

Why?

We are social creatures, we love being heard and we like having our voice. And Social Media is just another platform for voicing our opinions, sharing our life stories, connecting with friends, meeting new friends, ‘selling ourselves’….and all that in just few clicks in a matter of seconds, to the whole world. Wow!

I believe we are already past thinking about Social Media as a fad, not worth getting involved in it because it will go away tomorrow.

We are also past thinking that Social Media is only for celebrities, entertainment industry and big brands. If companies such as Ernst &Young are leveraging from Social Media, there is clearly more to it then chatting, photo sharing and playing games.

Social media is a new marketing tool that is effective, more targeted and cheap; and for that reason small business without big marketing budgets are benefiting even more from it. Anyone can be a marketing success online, no matter how small or big you marketing budget is. In the past, unless you had a massive marketing budget for TV commercials, printing and mailing campaigns, your marketing efforts have been restricted and you could have only reach a small group of people. With Social Media, the world is your oyster!

But you need to learn how to harvest it!

Social Media is not inventing new marketing techniques, the old ones still apply – they are just translated on-line. So whatever you are doing well off-line just needs to be translated on-line; simple as this.

But why even bother if you are doing just fine off-line. Here is 7 points why;

Social media and mostly Facebook are a ‘new’ word of mouth – and you know that word of mouth is the best marketing tool! Nothing new, just different platform.
People search for services and goods through social media and they seek opinions from their friends on Facebook.
People will choose what’s convenient. If they can’t find your business online they will do business with someone else. And that someone else is your competitor J
More people will visit your Facebook page before they visit your website.
It’s easier to rank well in Google with your Facebook, You Tube, Twitter & LinkedIn page then your website.
You can tell your story to masses with one click
Your competition is doing it, and doing it well!

Well…In have at least 3 more ‘WHYs’:

Social media is fabulous tool to engage with your clients, get to know them, what they like about your brand and what they dislike, what excites them in life. With this information you can target you market better.
You can test your new ideas, products and before you even launch them you can get fans behind them.
You can spy on your competition;
and the list could go on and on and on….

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that Social Media offers you pinpoint accuracy in targeting your market, communicating with your prospects and building meaningful business relationships in a way that it’s cost effective, easier and faster than anything else – and from a conform of your office desk.

You can no longer afford to ignore Social Media in your marketing plan.

Send us an email, and will get you started…