I am done talking about “marketing.” From now on, I’m going to ask you about your “awareness and visibility” strategy.
Companies need to stop treating social media like:
- a campaign (with an end date)
- a way to let everyone know about their products
- a way to treat the world to the awesomeness of their organization
That sounds like marketing to me. I want to know about your awareness and visibility strategy. Remember, as we learned in my Waterfall of Goals blog post, neither your traditional advertising nor your social media activities move product off the shelves. They increase awareness and visibility, creating leads. Those leads then need to be converted into sales by good salespeople, a good waiter, an airtight product seamlessly delivered. Marketing is not your sales machine, but rather your leads machine. And leads can be generated by both traditional and social methods. And social is not marketing in the traditional sense. Therefore, I am going to start making this distinction with semantics.
So, what is your awareness and visibility strategy?
That’s an excellent point Chris. In the course of the last 2 years I think that I’ve seen far too many social media campaigns with start and end dates. Not only that but it seems like the focus remains on meeting your deadlines as oppose to engagement and conversation. A strategy i’ve been using for a while is simply what you stated. Focusing on my awareness and visibility by the means of conversation, networking, complimenting other brands on the web, and providing quality content to help others with their social media strategies.
Nice post!
Thanks Ivan!
So well said. Tradition seems to be out the window with social media marketing. At first this was very strange to me. A concept from my early days of PR studies in the late 1980’s that was unheard of. Then again, so was the Internet.
As part owner of an online business I knew we had to think out of the box. All of our traditional methods seemed to be falling flat. So in comes social media. At first I was sceptical about using FB and twitter as a marketing tool, and truth be told, my business partner is still on the fence.
We teamed up with a great social media girl who also happened to be very keen on our business and understood our target audience. Once I learned I had to engage with my audience, not first about what we’re selling, but more about their common interest and conversations, I saw how it quickly started to come together.
Multiple posts about what we’re selling found to be pretty ineffective. But just opening and joining in on conversations out there in the media world with people of common interest is not only more effective, but a lot more fun.
I have only been hitting this for a week now, and already see a huge change in following. (about a 75% increase) on top of it I enjoy the conversations so much better. I’m finally having the conversations with like-interested people that are difficult to have when all people see is your web site. That’s just an aesthetic. What really makes the difference is that the customer who comes to our site, already feels that they know something about us that makes them feel comfortable.
So maybe they like the pics of our dogs at work, or the fact that I like bacon and beer too, and through all of that, the best is that they like what they see when they visit the site and want to have our products. But if they don’t know who we are, they’re never going to come or tell their friends about us.
So, I will continue to tweet and post with my new found social media friends out there about what matters to them first and see how that goes. So far I’m finally enjoying marketing again!
Well said, Chris. I think it’s just a change in the way we look at business. People want to deal with people. People want transparency, honesty, they don’t want to be ‘sold.’ They want to make decisions for themselves. A lot of people credit social media with creating that mindset, but I think it is the opposite. I think social media is working as a ‘awareness and visibility strategy’ because it caters to that mindset.
-Danielle
Good points, Chris. What you are describing is more of an integrated strategy that looks at the whole picture. There are several steps for a sale to occur and awareness if definitely a key one !
Excellent thoughts, Chris. For me, “awareness and visibility” is a more palatable twist on traditional Public Relations. What’s really important is to connect with people in a sincere, authentic manner. Of course, it is most meaningful to connect in person, at your business or in the community, but there are so many good methods to really help make it stick. Our services and products are an extension of who we are as people, so it’s important that we convey that message in every way possible to our customers and community as a whole.
This ties in well with my point about stories! Your one chance to snag them needs to get them in but you’ve got to keep them engaged.
I’m tired of it as well. Folks asking how they can turn their twitter stream into – customers, listeners, and more but they want to just push ads, links, and schedules. Sigh. Yellow pages anyone?!
Now there’s one you should tackle – Twitter and Facebook #FAIL if you use them as Yellowpages.
Good post.
Loves this post. Such a good perspective on the whole social media thing. The key word here is ‘social’ as in engaging with people often, on an interesting level, and maintaining those relationships. This is the key to a successful social media campaign. I imagine it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.