In the yesteryears in the advertising universe, the most important focus in a business’s advertising plan was “Industrial Marketing”. In other words as a company if have to have access to a hefty advertising budget to advertise yoy product or services all over print, newspaper, television, radio, leaflets, outdoor hoardings and other ways of expensive advertising.
Nowadays we live in a transformed and different world.
The term “Social Media” was first introduced in 2006. Many experts credit this to Chris Shipley, the Co founder of Guidewire Group to be the first to describe the usage of blogs, networking sites or a social presence on the internet as “Social Media”. The best thing about it is that with very low or no cost you can build your brand and promote your business in a very relaxed social platform which has a more personal feel and gives opportunity to businesses to interact with their customers rather than directly throwing sales piches. The more attention you draw to your online business or website, the more genuine traffic you get on the website. That results in more sales and creates opportunities to scale up your online business.
There are 4 most important ways you can promote your business on the online social media platform.
1. Information, Information, Information
Consumers have become quite savvy over years. They don’t to be sold to, there are too many shysters and conmen that have made people more nervy about buying. Instead of trapped down by conventional “Buy Now ! Best Offer” and petty sales tactics, consumers are focusing into who can give them the best and reliable information. Today on the internet consumers have access to vast amount of information on a product before spending a single rupee. And the trick is by using social media platform you can share huge amount of information consumers are searching for without any start up costs. By providing valuable informations to consumers you are leading them to business connections, relationships, trust, and at last sales. There is a old saying, “If you want to sell a drill, teach people how to dig”.
2. Branding
These days people are making lots of money on the internet. The world is getting closer and closer and majority of the people on earth are online now. An entrepreneur who works from home with a small business is now able to define himself as an expert in his niche category. This is the best thing in social media, it allows small businesses or start ups to create and develop their own brand and the best thing is that you can control your brand awareness and marketing messages. You don’t need to be a big corporate house with loads of advertising budget to educate consumers about your particular niche. People always buy from people, so how you create the brand awareness is very important and crucial.
3. Leverage
Leverage is a measure of how revenue growth turns into earnings growth. It can be a ratio of fixed costs to variable costs incurred to generate the revenue. It allows you to use others to build or 'leverage' your exposure so for the same amount of work you get exponentially bigger results. Social Media is the perfect medium for this.
4. Trust
The point in doing all of this in a social media platform is to build relationships of trust with your people who are your potential customers. The more people you will connect with online on this social media platform the more you can communicate and share information with them. If they like your information they will instantly see you as a person or a brand trustworthy. And as I have already said, People buy from People”.
Social media has never been more powerful than now. With new methods evolving in online social media arena, social media optimization (SMO) has become the buzz word in the Internet marketing world. Social Media is definitely here to stay, could your business survive without it?
