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Doing It Right: Integrating Social Media with Email Marketing

When talking about online marketing, these two will always come up in people’s minds: email marketing and social media marketing. This is for good reason.

First of all, email marketing has been around for nearly three decades since it was first used in the 90s as a cost-effective, direct response method to generate massive leads. It still does today.

2002 saw the birth of social networking sites like MySpace and LinkedIn. As more and more people started using them, social media marketing came along. It was an instant success, and for a time many companies began using it to promote their brands.

But now things have changed. The online space has become extremely competitive, and we don’t see them being used by online marketers the way they used to. They knew their previous tactics won’t work anymore and so they started to rethink their strategies just to stay in business.

Why is this so?

Common Issues with Social Media Marketing

The problem with most online marketers today is they took something very powerful and useful, and turned it into a mindless lead generating tool with no creativity, and no real intention of creating meaningful connections or establishing good relationships. They took “the old-school” method of advertisement and simply moved it online.

Most of the bad rap social media marketing got into is the so-called ‘pay-to-play’ tactics used to create a superficial (or even artificial) ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ with little or no interaction whatsoever. This obviously doesn’t work with today’s savvy consumers.

Read: How All the Social Media Experts Got it Wrong

However, some social media marketers use legitimate practices to get results, but it takes a lot of time and effort (try responding to all the comments to your posts or tweets and you’ll get the idea). It also takes talent and creativity just to get people to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ your post in social media.

Another issue with social media marketing is that you’re piggybacking on somebody else’s platform. If for whatever reason the social networking site decides to take down your social media account, goes under, or loses popularity, you’ll lose all your connections and you’ll have to start over from scratch. And as they say, ‘Own the racecourse, not the racehorse’ — don’t go all out on something you have no control over.

Why People Still Do Email Marketing Today

When social media marketing took off with just a million users to 1.7 billion worldwide, some believed it’s the end of the road for email marketing. The fact is, email marketing still ranks first as the marketing tool preferred by companies to conduct their businesses online.

Research shows why this is the case.

77% of consumers are more likely to respond to promotional messages in their emails than their social media accounts
66% of consumers purchased their products because of promotional messages and follow-ups from emails
44% of users go their emails to check with a company they know as opposed to 4% in Facebook

But here’s why email marketing still ranks first:

58% of people who go online check their emails FIRST, followed by search portal (20%), Facebook (11%), news site (5%), company website (3%), and others (3%).

Email marketing is still the online marketer’s best friend when it comes to lead conversion. If you’re into social media marketing, you might consider having an email marketing strategy as well.

Using Two Different Approach

Using social media and email marketing all at once is like having two different kinds of tools. Although very different, they can work together towards the same goal. Mostly, however, people have been using them for the wrong reason.

Online marketers need to understand the difference between communicating and mass sharing. Social media has always been used for sharing good reads, an interesting find, or anything that would start a conversation. Emails are most effective when following up with your fans or followers.

Here are 5 simple tips that you can use to integrate social media into your email marketing strategy:

Create a group on social media and invite people to join in. Spend some time on your social media home page’s look and feel. Run contests, or give freebies, and discounts for active fans and followers.
Time your posts well. Make them as ‘catchy’, relevant, and timely as possible. Hint: research have shown the average life span of a Facebook post to be around 3 to 5 hours.
For Facebook users, they can use ‘call-to-action’ (CTA) buttons to lead visitors and fans to their landing page.
For Twitter users, they can use Twitter cards to display their photos, and links to their landing page, app or downloadable content.
Export your friends’ and followers’ email accounts to your mailing list for your email marketing campaigns and follow-ups.

Small Business Dream is a sales and marketing tool designed to seamlessly integrate social media and email marketing for your small business. Visit us at www.smallbizdream.com and learn more about our Small Business Profitability Blueprint

5 Ways To Better Connect With Your Customers

It is easier and more convenient than ever to connect with your customers in order to grow your loyal customer database. But with so many tools and resources, it can also get complicated and overwhelming to make those personal connections with your customers.

Social media is a way to connect with your customers if done correctly—creating interesting contents that your customers want to share—but spamming your connections with your product updates, urging them to buy your products, is the quickest way to lose them.

To be able to help you make those better and loyal connections, here are five simple and effective ways to better connect with your customers, while growing your brand and business at the same time.

1) Know Your Customers

The first thing that you need to do to establish a better connection with your customers is to know them on a personal level. This allows you to identify the following information:

demographics (age, location, gender, hobbies and interests)
personal wants and needs
occupation
income

With these details available, you can strategize your marketing approach and ways to promote your products and services. This can also help you decide whether you need to modify the products you provide as well as the services you offer to your customers.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools to collect data from your customer. Information from Google can help you start a targeted customer database. You can discover what kind of customers you have and what they need from you. These details can also help you with identifying their online habits which can assist you with knowing the proper time to begin marketing your products and promoting them.

Facebook also has some great analytics tools to get to know your customers. If you look at the insights, you can find out all types of information about your audience – down to their interests and hobbies – and you can better connect with them.

Other social media platforms like Twitter and Pinterest have analytics tools, but none of them have caught up to Facebook in terms of usefulness or ability to capture as much customer data as possible.

Aside from these tools, you can also do market research by doing a survey and listening to their feedback in your comment section, and from review sites and online forums. Learn who your customers are by doing an analysis of your collected customer data and segment them accordingly to be able to personalize the connection.

2) Engage on Social Media

With the growth of social media, it is one of the better ways to have a connection with your customers online. Social media have become the essential online tool for customers to search for products and services they need. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other available resources are avenues for people to engage and for brands to grow their business.

Facebook can be used to build brand awareness and personally connect with customers. You can create a Facebook Page where you can post videos and images explaining your products and inform them the benefits they will get if they avail them from you. You can also check customer complaints and deal with them personally.

Try running competitions on social media where your customers can get a chance to win free services. These can be fun and help you win a ton of extra true fans as well.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a way for customers to post their feedback. Hear what they think personally about your products and engage with them by answering their queries directly. You can also keep your followers up-to-date by sharing news immediately. Twitter can also help you track what your competitors are up to.

If your customers are on Twitter and they post about your company then you better respond – whether it’s good or bad comment!

A great place to market your brand with a simple visual element is Instagram. With currently more than 300 million daily users, Instagram is quickly climbing up the social media hierarchy of best sites to connect with customers. With a simple yet rich media content, it can engage more users with a strategic use of search keywords through using hashtags and also with a good skill on photography. There are several tips on how to have eye catching images to boost your online presence and your social media posts.

3) Start Live Business Events

You shouldn’t just focus all your efforts online. Face-to-face engagements are still very important and can help connect your business to your customers. Register to business expos where you display your products and market them to existing and potential customers. Get to see their response and feedback while they sample your products or test them through demonstrations and exhibits.

If you have a physical store, invite your loyal customers to your launching parties. You can also get to know your leads and engage with them to build partnership. These customers, while they have the chance to visit your store, will share their experience on social media or will spread their thoughts by word of mouth — the cheapest and most effective way of marketing.

Of course, for a live business event, you need to plan first. Choose a venue with good atmosphere and filled with interesting activities. Don’t forget to let your customers get involved. Learn from them first hand, see their reactions personally, and talk to your customers to leave a good impression about your products and your brand.

4) Keep Them Updated

Send them emails, newsletters, or push notifications on their mobile devices for announcements on new product launching, promotions or a new published post on your blog. Keeping your customers in the loop is the easiest way to reach them whether on social media or on traditional media like newspapers and magazines.

Update your social media channels through a tool like Small Business Dreams and send out a newsletter. With the Small Business Dreams app, you can send automated and semi-automated messages to let your customers and leads know what’s going on in your industry or other news. The app prompts you when it’s time to reach out to a customer so you never have to remember and risk forgetting.

You can also utilize social media advertisement services like Facebook Ads to promote the updates on your brand and your products. Never miss to encourage your customers to also share your updates to family members and friends who can possibly be potential customers.

Keeping your customers updated lets them know more about business and how you can bring them values into their lives.

5) Provide Good Customer Service

There is no better way to keep your customers coming back to buy your products and avail your services than to have a good customer service experience. Customer service is a necessity to an emerging customer-based industry. This means attending customer on a timely manner on your social media channels, forum sites and emails whether they have questions, inquiries, or concerns.

Giving your customers a superior customer service is one of the ways to engage and to build a better connection with them. This is also ideal when trying to convince potential customers to get your products and tell other people about how they affected their lives. According to a survey, customers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase due to bad customer service. Potential customers also check Net Promoters Scores (NPS) to see if a brand and the products and services they provide will make a difference to what they need.

Building the trust with your customers, no matter how strong your social media channels, how huge your customer database or how engaged you are with them on events will be affected by the experience they are getting from you through your customer service. You need to plan out the section of your business to be able to attract new customers and let existing customers stay with you for the better of your brand and your business.

Connect with customers better and reach out to new prospects by visiting our website at www.smallbizdream.com.

How To Beat the Competition Using Social Media

Social media is still one of the most misunderstood marketing tools for small businesses. If you’re not using it, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to drive customers to your website and ultimately make a purchase.

According to a recent LinkedIn study, a whopping 81% of businesses use social media to drive growth while an additional 9 % intend to use social media in the future. If your online presence isn’t up to par, you may have missed out or you may have though that social media is already too crowded. In fact, it is still a vital way for businesses to reach their customers if done correctly.

Unfortunately most businesses don’t understand how to use it to connect with their customers and drive the results they want. Consumers now are more savvy than ever before and do their research before reaching a purchase decision. And that includes searching businesses’ social media presence.

In today’s competitive world, small businesses need to have a solid online presence in order to succeed. A lot of people are hesitant to do business with a company that doesn’t have a solid online presence. If they don’t see a strong following on any of the channels, they might look for somebody else with more social proof.

Customers are also more likely to speak out their grievances online which is why it is crucial for businesses to respond to customer inquiries and reviews. But you shouldn’t just be reactive online. Social media is a very inexpensive way to reach the same amount of people as doing a national advertisement campaign on television. Make use of creative social media content to grab people’s attention.

The age of your customers will also determine the way you communicate with them online. Millennials are more skeptical than older ones and typically want to know their business owners.

Part of the problem with social media is that small businesses have a hard time keeping track of their return of investment. It can be especially difficult to track organic social media if a small business is on a budget. Usually, it is the first thing to go.

However for those who invest consistently in social media, most people agree that there’s a payoff within the first two years and a significant payoff in five years. A small caveat here: it’s important that you don’t try competing with the big companies, especially online. They have people — sometimes entire departments — dedicated entirely to social media and their online presence.

You have to think how you can carve your own space out online. Perhaps it’s coming up with a unique and exciting campaign or maybe dominating a local area.

For the last couple of years, people have been focusing on paid advertising instead of organic content. Paid social media has enormous upside and is cost effective compared to other forms of advertising. But here’s the thing: no amount of paid social media is going to turn a dull, uninteresting content into a good one. And for the most part it isn’t sustainable for small businesses on a tight budget.

However organic content is still incredibly powerful and when used correctly, it can be incredibly effective. Organic content is the long-game plan of your brand. For example, if you use hashtags properly, you can easily be discovered over time. Whether you run a local restaurant or coffee shop, if you keep using relevant hashtags then you’ll be a part of the conversation which is the first step to getting sales.

If you run a small business you want to focus your time, money and effort on creating lots of great content. The amount of money you spend on social media depends on your industry and marketing goals. The biggest thing some businesses don’t understand is that quality content is so important when marketing to anyone under the age of 40.

Anyone could discover your business for the first time through Google search or though social media. If you’re not focused on quality content that you put out in social networking sites, you’ll become irrelevant. Organic reach is so important because the impressions you get when someone comes directly to your page is that they are more qualified leads and potentially valuable customers.

There are plenty of platforms out there for you to choose from to help you grow your audience in Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram to Twitter. Choose which one is right for you and your business. While the supply and demand for paid advertisement becomes more competitive and saturated there is a greater opening for brands to make headway organically.

How to Use Hashtags for Your Small Business Marketing

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that the number of businesses who utilize social media as a marketing medium has grown in massive numbers.

Now…for the purpose of our business, we’ve found that there are a couple of mediums that give us greater latitude, and much bigger “bang for our marketing buck” with regard to creativity than do others. And you might find the same goes for your own business social media purposes. In trying out the various platforms, we generally suggest that you find out which works best, and focus on those.

Twitter for instance, utilizes text to 140 characters, so if your message is text focused, and you can get that message (or a tantalizing part of that message) across in less than that, it’s a kick ass way to go, but creativity still rules. Simply said, the fact that you’re only ‘allowed’ 140 characters on Twitter can create the need to include links to whatever website or blog the rest of your information is located on.

What exactly IS a ‘hashtag’?

Hashtags have become so common these days that people have started using them outside of their intended purpose. People use them in text messages, chats, songs, and advertisements.

A “hashtag” is more simply described as a word preceded by the number sign (#).You’ll see them across a variety of different social networks like Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, and occasionally on Facebook. When Pinterest first came out in 2010 there was a lot of confusion about hashtags and how they were being used on that platform.

Hashtags (#) are used for the purpose of locating people/industries/topics that you and/or your company might be interested in following/communicating with, etc. Whenever a user adds a hashtag to their post, it is immediately indexed by the social network and searchable by other users. Once someone clicks on that hashtag, they’ll be brought to a page that aggregates all of the posts with the same hash tagged keyword in real-time.

Those hashtags in the Instagram platform serve the same purpose, even though it’s primarily an image driven vehicle (no pun intended there). Using hashtags within those messages also brings WAY more eyeballs than those posted without them (it’s astonishing just how much traffic a simple hashtag can bring).

So now you ask, “how do I know which hashtags I should be using for my business?” There are a couple of really simple answers to this question;

1. When it comes to hashtags, common sense generally prevails. Using a business related word and simply prefixing it with a “#” is generally one of the best ways to start testing out some favorites.

2. When it doubt, Google it. Search for popular hashtags related to your business on Google! Google is a super helpful resource, and you can find any number of hashtag lists for use on your preferred social media platform, for just about any business you dare to search. Do some testing and tweaking. Figure out which hashtags work best on which platform for your business, and get to it!

Despite the problems I have outlined in this book, I believe that the future of small business is bright. Regardless of what your customer’s needs are, there’s one universal way to explode your sales, and keep that customer coming back, and/or referring your business; Keeping in touch. By ‘keeping in touch’ I’m not saying that you should badger your customer incessantly with mindless chatter. By “keeping in touch”, you’re simply, periodically putting yourself at the forefront of your customer’s mind with timely, helpful, metered communication.

Now you ask, “what exactly IS timely, helpful, metered communication”? Well ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to tell you. Go grab a java, take a seat in a big comfy chair, and read on.

Let’s say you’re in the real estate business. Obviously your customers aren’t buying real estate the way they’d buy say…socks (or maybe they are). Just because a client makes one real estate purchase doesn’t mean that the ‘sale’ is done when your commission cheque clears, but your client very likely has friends. And what do you think happens when those friends are buying property? They ask a friend for a referral. And if you don’t position yourself in such a way that there really ISN’T anyone else that your client can think of when asked for that referral, your sales, and therefore your commissions will have no other avenue but to jump exponentially.

Sounds great, right? I mean, who doesn’t want to make more money, while helping a client remember to do helpful things with regard to their real estate purchase? If you could in addition, have those helpful reminders to go out on a set schedule, so much the better, right?

Implementing a simple ‘system’ for reaching out to those customers automatically makes the task of keeping in touch one of the more simple tasks that you undertake in your business, instead of one that you dread for how difficult it can be.

If your business is a restaurant, keeping in touch is even more simple, by sending out ‘reminders’ of regular specials and special events happening in your establishment. It’s easy to keep your income pipeline full, when you’re at the forefront of the minds of your customers, regulars or not.

Making the task of staying in touch even simpler, why not implement a mobile CRM to your marketing strategy? That way your business doesn’t need to rely on you having time to sit down at a computer to do your ‘staying in touch’ tasks.

Cool, right?

What is Wrong With Twitter

We’ve all heard Twitter being likened to a cocktail party, in which you can mill about and join in on any digital conversation that you feel is interesting, and it might have started out that way.

But now it seems that Twitter has turned into a cocktail party in a football stadium, during the Super Bowl game.

Here’s how I see Twitter working if you follow most of the Twitter gurus, Twitter e-book publishers, and self-professed twitter list building experts. Let’s follow through on that cocktail party concept, and assume you’re there for the purpose of finding a date, and eventually a girlfriend/boyfriend, leading to a husband or wife.

The intent seems to have become to say “HI” to everybody at the party as fast as possible (loosely translated, this equates to randomly follow all of them), in as loud a voice as possible (meaning, use some automated tool to follow them), and try to get a first date with everyone you said “Hi” to within 5 minutes (or get them to follow you back).

Is it me, or does this seem delusional?

You know nothing about the people you said Hi to (or followed), nothing about what they are talking about, or what they do, or what their interests are, nothing about whether or not you have anything in common, (didn’t even look at their profile)

Due to having such a huge list of people that you know nothing about, but expect them to agree to your first date request, you have no time at all to take the actions that could actually EARN you that first date.

You didn’t listen to what they are talking about (actually read what THEY post), you didn’t show any interest in them by being interested in anything they said (“Like” something they post), and you didn’t brag about how cool you thought they were and how much you have in common by telling others about them! (“re-tweeting a post or giving them a “Mention”)

You then show your impatience by waiting only a day or two, with no further communication from you to them before you ex-communicate them for not accepting your date offer! (“un-follow”).

Then you brag about your conquests by advertising to the world how many first dates you have had! (I grew by 595 “followers” today) And of course you keep secret how many never called you back. (“un-followed” you) As long as you go on enough first dates, you will continue to grow your ever so valuable list of like minded folks.

It’s noisy, misdirected, misunderstood and even rude. So, even though you have such a misguided approach, you manage to find a few to AGREE to have that first date (or they “followed” you back).

Of course, even though you don’t even know if you like or are interested in them, and they likely have no idea about you as you are both likely following the same misguided technique, you have your robot secretary (or auto reply tool) show up for you (“direct message”) as you are far too busy with your HUGE list of unqualified date prospects to show up in person to explore the possibilities with the one who said they are interested!

If the most common thing to happen, which is your robot secretary (or “direct message”) shows up to find out that they also sent their robot secretary (auto reply to “direct message”) vs. showing up in person, doesn’t happen, there are two ways this seems to go, and the first is almost laughable.

Your robot secretary (or your “direct message”) sits down, but rather than give a compliment, or engage in a meaningful two sided conversation to get to know you, you quickly tell your date (or your “follower”) they have not connected to you the right way to create the most favourable first impression, and you suggest that they re-schedule to a different venue, which you conveniently give them the address to (you telling them to ‘follow you on Facebook or Instagram, or join your newsletter by the link you’ve so graciously included, etc.)

Why wouldn’t you just engage with them in the medium they FOUND you on FIRST? Warm them up to you, t h e n suggest you have other places they can learn more about you after the first date is over, or in order to agree to that first date. Twitter recently took the 140 character limit off the Direct Message feature, for goodness sake.

The second way we are taught to teach our robot secretaries is even more damaging if that is possible.

Your robot secretary sits down at the date, and gives a pre-recorded generic message that doesn’t acknowledge you even read your potential date’s profile, or that you learned anything about them, vomiting your information all over them being convinced they (as a non-curated follower) are totally into you!

Let’s say you fooled your date, they didn’t realize it wasn’t you, or they knew it wasn’t but actually their intention for meeting you was NOT to care what you say, but try to force you to hear what they had to say, so they agreed to a second date.

The better robot secretaries will help this. They will automatically follow up with some equally random, off-putting self-promotion a few days later. This usually guarantees your date will stop returning your calls (or not read, like, reply, or retweet), or worse yet, EX-COMMUNICATE YOU (or “un-follow” you). Either way, you’re NOT getting a second date.

Welcome to Twitter. Everybody talking AT each other, instead of WITH and TO each other.
Now the idea is to get your first dates to turn into second dates, and second to third, to boyfriend/girlfriend, to marriage.

Let’s consider marriage to be the sale.
This to me is Twitter done WRONG! How do we do Twitter the RIGHT way?