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Social Media Minute: Building Relationships with Social Networking
April 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The WebPresence™ Marketing team loves to share our passion for social media and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how we use it to make our clients successful every single day. Each week, we will post a blog about what’s going on in the WebPresence office and give you some helpful tips to help grow your business’ online presence.
One of the most rewarding parts about working in the WebPresence™ office is the opportunity we have to get to know each one of our clients. We love to share happy news, celebrate successes, or hear about the general goings-on in the lives of our clients. Because we truly enjoy getting to know each client, it makes us want to work hard for them and gain and maintain their trust in us. This week’s Social Media Minute outlines how building solid relationships with customers by utilizing social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter effectively can go a long way in making them customers for life.
What’s your favorite place to grab a slice of pizza after work?
Is there a place in town where “everyone knows your name?” Most folks do, and would love to tell you about it. Asking questions like this makes your Facebook page a place where people can connect, build relationships and bond over common likes. The trick, of course, is to have a lot of these questions in your back pocket so that you’re not struggling to find something to talk about! As you start to accumulate questions, also be sure you’re keeping track of what you’re asking. You don’t want to sound like a broken record!
Where is your favorite place to volunteer your time?
The benefit of being a small business owner is that you are already an integral part of your community. You have a leg up on corporate competition because you live next door to your customers and have an opportunity to connect with them.
But there’s a trick here, too. If you’re not careful, you can come off like you’re seeking praise and recognition rather than trying to help folks in need. The advantage that a professional social marketer brings is the ability to walk that fine line; if you choose to do this yourself, be sure you don’t sound like you’re patting yourself on the back! (Be sure to make sure you’re not permanently damaging your online reputation!)
Does your business have a soul?
Facebook and Twitter pages that create a sense of community instead of being just another sales message is a very good thing…and is especially useful for cutting through the clutter of corporate-speak out there. In fact, when done right, it shows that your business has a soul. So many businesses utilize Facebook and Twitter as a one-way channel to scream or repeat their sales message like a loud, broken record…and more often than not, this message falls on deaf ears. But creating a conversation with your customers and encouraging participation goes a long way towards building trusting relationships. And those are the customers that will return time and time again.
Don’t know where to start? Can’t come up with questions, don’t know how to track and measure the benefits what you’ve done, or maybe you’d like some help with sounding like a caring, involved, pillar of your business and local communities – instead of sounding like you’re tooting your own horn? Give AMG a call at 1-866-520-3030 or drop us a line! We professionally manage our WebPresence clients’ social marketing in a way that creates relationship, builds trust, increases brand awareness, encourages participation…and we GET CUSTOMERS INTO YOUR BUSINESS!
Are you permanently damaging your online reputation?
April 15, 2011 By 2 Comments
Have you seen how Google is using social media in their search results? Check out the following image!
With social media becoming a major player in today’s search engine ranking results, it has never been more critical than now to have your accounts PROFESSIONALLY managed. One poorly chosen response or statement, and your company’s reputation in your local community can be permanently damaged.
Want proof?
Here’s how Skittles, a PR executive, the designer Kenneth Cole, and even the Red Cross have harmed their reputation because they either…
- didn’t manage their social media at all
- didn’t let a professional manage their social media
- or didn’t monitor their social media!
But here’s the thing: professionally managing and monitoring your social media is really just scratching the surface…it’s the bare minimum when it comes to having a professional web presence.
If you really want to make the most of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., you should be thinking about COMBINING your efforts on the web. It’s one thing to post interesting content that your fans and followers pay attention to…but another thing entirely to tie that into your Search Engine Optimization!
If you want to see a real fight, put all of those creative teams from different companies on the same project…In other words, in order to manage your presence on the web, you can hire a social marketing team, and hire a separate SEO team, and hire another company to monitor your reputation, and a fourth team that produces content, and you can pay them each thousands of dollars each month…
And at the end of the day, each of those teams would still only be doing part of the work.
Your social networking team needs to know what your SEO team is doing to be truly effective, and needs to know about everything your content team is writing so they can post about it. Reputation management works hand-in-hand with SEO and social marketing. SEO works best when done hand-in-hand with social marketing and content writers.
And the list goes on!
When it’s all said and done, you are best served doing ALL of this yourself…
(Of course, before you start, ask yourself if you really have another 6-8 hours every day available AND an education in the latest online marketing…)
…OR having ONE company do ALL of it for you.
That’s the only way that each piece will be effective!
The good news? It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to have it done right (Want proof? Google auto repair littleton and see how many shops Keller Bros. is beating out.)
In fact, we’re so confident that you can’t find BETTER results for BETTER money than you can get with WebPresence™ Marketing from AMG…that during April, we’re putting our money where our mouth is and giving everyone who joins WebPresence Marketing a free company website.
Not a dinky fill-in-the-blank copy of somebody else’s website. Not a generic template. A real, professionally-designed, from-scratch website built to suit your business.
Take advantage of this offer, PLUS learn how you can get more than $3000 in bonuses for signing up today, click here!
Birds of a Feather: Targeted Marketing vs. Phone Book Ads
March 24, 2011 By 2 Comments
I recently had a newer client come to me asking us to redesign his local phone book ad. I’ve been saying for years that the phone book is dead…and it’s not hard to see why. Here in Denver, we’re buried under an avalanche of different yellow pages, and there’s simply no way to be in all of them.
Not to mention the fact that people are using search engines instead. (TWICE AS MUCH, according to the graph on the right from eMarketer.com.)
But that doesn’t stop sales people from calling and trying to sell that ad space…which is why I want to set the record straight when it comes to marketing:
Targeted mail outperforms untargeted marketing like the yellow pages in every way.
Here’s why:
“When I finally switched from traditional advertising – yellow pages, neighborhood coupons and an antiquated web site – and focused on a frequent, targeted mailing program and having a comprehensive internet marking presence, my sales tripled and my net profit went up ten-fold. Today, sales and profit continue to increase at an amazing pace in spite of the economy and all the bad news out there.”
Terry Keller
Owner, Keller Bros. Auto Repair, Littleton, CO
Whether you’re talking about direct mail or internet marketing, you need to be working to attract a targeted customer in a targeted neighborhood. In direct mail, that means you should be mailing into specific neighborhoods with a message that targets specific customers.
Trying to sing a song that everyone likes is not going to work for most small businesses…it’s much more effective to determine WHO your customers ARE and focus your ad dollars on precisely what they want to “hear,” and then get busy delivering the mail and the experience once they arrive!
Same with electronic marketing: your SEO should be targeting a specific group of people and your website should be speaking directly to and attracting great customers who buy and refer other great customers. Birds of a feather DO flock together!
And while we’re speaking in the terms of birds…which would you rather be doing — shooting wildly in the dark or taking precise rifle shots from a comfortable, planned position of knowledge and experience?
For more info on how to get affordable, but highly targeted direct mail and internet marketing solutions for your business, give us a call at 866-520-3030 or click here to send us an email!
Does Your Business Have a LIVING Marketing Tool?
March 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
What if I told you that most of your advertising is a waste of money?!
A living marketing tool helps you make sure you’re spending correctly and only in the right areas. It’s the difference between a predictable and effective marketing plan that helps you stay busy all year long…and one that doesn’t.
If you’re an automotive repair shop on RPM ToolKit™, you’ve got this kind of tool already. But if you’re not, here’s how to get started…
First, you need to track sales by source. Your POS software should be able to break this down for you if you’ve been diligent about tracking every ad you place and every piece you send. This doesn’t just mean external sources either…it should include all of the costs involved in maintaining your affiliations and credentials as well as your cost to market to your internal customer database (through newsletters, cards, bounce-back coupons, and more).
Next, track your referrals by customer, making sure to track the referring customer back to the original source so you understand which coupons lead to customers who refer.
Then you need to track the true cost of each source, including the amounts of discounts and giveaways. This means tracking the cost to design, the cost to print, the cost to mail and the cost of the discount.
Once you’ve got it broken down by category for each month, you’ll have a true picture of how much you’re spending on marketing dollars as a percentage of sales. Why is that important? If you’re not spending 6-10% of sales, you’ll never get the growth you want!
These days, if you’re not spending at LEAST 6-8% of sales on marketing, you’re probably not even holding steady, much less growing!
Now, as you break down your spending by month and get an accurate picture of how much you’re spending as a percentage of sales and where you’re spending it, consider this…
On average, it takes 4-6 weeks to see the FIRST results from marketing. The marketing you do today won’t see the biggest impact until almost May!
In other words, you can’t wait to until June to start advertising if you want customers in June!
The same goes for your slow months…if you wait until business is already dead to start advertising, you still have six more weeks of no business to survive before an influx of customers!
If you want to make this your best year ever, you need a living marketing plan, and you need to stick to it. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy fishing a LOT more when I know the fish are biting!
(We’d like to help you create a living marketing tool for your business. We help all of our clients create one! Give us a call today at 866-520-3030 and make this summer your best ever, and next winter, your warmest!)
