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Five Reasons Why Businesses Should Use Social Media Marketing

December 28th, 2008
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Adam Singer, from thefuturebuzz.com recently wrote a brilliant post that touched upon 5 reasons why you should learn about social media. He also tagged me for my thoughts on the subject, so in good spirit, I thought I would do a post on 5 reasons why businesses should learn and use social media for marketing. This is also a follow up for a post I did last week titled, social media marketing – who, what, when, where, why and how?

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1) The cost for entry is minimal.

At the very least, for the price of hosting and setting up a blog, you can begin to engage in social media marketing. You can spend dollars on buying banner advertisements, keyword placement on search engines and so forth. The cost barrier for entry is relatively low, compare that to the costly old-school, and increasingly ineffective ways of marketing such as print, TV, radio and so forth. Don’t get me wrong, blogging is just one aspect of your marketing strategy, but the essential tools you will also use such as Twitter, Facebook, and social bookmarking, for example, for the most part cost nothing to use. Your cost is time, time spent establishing and engaging your brand’s presence online. If you decided to retain a PR agency, or social media consultant, you obviously will incur higher costs. Doing it in-house, if you can, is the way to go. Specifically, if you are a small business and don’t have a large advertising budget. With the economy in it’s current state, even the larger corporations are feeling the brunt and they are slashing their advertising budgets in half, some are totally eliminating them all together and looking for more effective means of advertising. You can bet a lot of them are using their in-house staff to accomplish this.

2) Your current and potential customers are using it.

We are not living back in the 1996-1997 era, where the Internet to most people was AOL, and the way we accessed it was through 56K modems or lower. Fast forward ten going on eleven years, things have changed dramatically. It’s now not an option to be online, it’s a necessity. We are living in a connected digital state of mind, we are connected at all times thanks, to broadband. With that being said, people, your customer’s purchasing decisions are being influenced by social media, i.e blogs. Before making a purchasing decision, consumers nowadays are smartly using the Internet to find, compare, and research before ultimately spending their money. Have you looked around? There is a reason why your competitors, especially the ones in the know, are already using social media. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be as well.

3) Brand monitoring, listen, learn and react.

If your customers are online you can bet they are talking, positively or negatively. Social media is largely word of mouth marketing. Positive chatter can be used to your advantage and should be taken advantage of when possible. You should put forth the effort to respond to this chatter with gratitude. It never hurts to reward positive feedback, as it could only be beneficial to your brand. This can be done in a multitude of simple and effective ways. Negative chatter on the hand, can be detrimental and needs to be paid close attention to. On average, dissatisfied customers will tell somewhere between 13 and 20 other people how dissatisfied they were, and that’s offline we are talking about. Now could you imagine online? Learn how to use the tools to your advantage, and most importantly listen and react accordingly.

4) Compete on an even playing field.

Before the advent of social media, you needed Madison Ave dollars to compete with the big boys. Social media affords you the opportunity to compete on an even, level playing field. By using an effective social media and SEO strategy, you can achieve the same reach and success your competitors have no matter their size or bankroll. Social media actually gives you a leg up on your competition, if you are determined, motivated and willing to put the time into it.

5) Traditional websites are a thing of the past and just wont cut it anymore.

Do you have a killer four or five letter keyword dot com domain with plenty of type in traffic? Maybe so if you were lucky enough to buy it back in the early to mid 90’s. If you don’t, you will need other ways of generating traffic, and on the cheap. You could always spend advertising dollars on costly PPC campaigns. That’s one way of generating quality, targeted traffic, and by all means can be very effective. If you are on a budget or for that matter have no budget, social media marketing combined with organic SEO efforts is your only answer. Blogging, social networking sites, and Twitter are much more effective in getting the word out there and driving traffic as compared to a static stand alone html website. The ” if you build it they will come” mentality does not work on the Internet. You need as many hooks as possible to lure customers in. Remember this a tremendous ocean that you are fishing in. Social media marketing should be used in addition to your traditional website.

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Mike Fruchter ,

Viewing 8 Comments

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    You're right, the barrier to entry is low. So you pay a monthly hosting fee, big deal. That's nothing compared to the hundreds of dollars spent on other forms of print media.

    Then factor in all of the free social networking tools that help spread your message/service offering. There is of course the time investment that goes into it all, but all in all, it's cost-effective marketing. Something that every business can benefit from moving into 2009!
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    The number of people I coach who tell me they are not getting traffic and that the site is looking a bit tired. I advise most clients to start a blog in preference to web site. it is so dynamic and by its very nature the client is forced to keep the content fresh.
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    Great Post! ... Let me ask a question. Social Media seems to go well with tech companies and consumer goods companies. Now, the other day I was sitting a board meeting at my Chamber of Commerce. As we talked about media in general I realized that all the people I was talking with, was representing Capital Goods Producers. Furthermore, most of their customers don't even know what SM is. Then what? Of course social media is not the best solution for all... But are there just times where its not at all an option.. what do you think?
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    Peter,

    I hit on this topic before in a previous post. I will re-hash on it a bit. While I'm a champion crusader for social media. It's not for every business out there. You pointed out a great example of it in your post. I feel most business can learn about SM, but for some it would simply not matter. If your existing customer base is not using social media, it's a complete waste of time. That's not to say some elements of SM can't be incorporated into the companies marketing strategy such as a blog.

    Companies such as the one you point out can market effectively online to their customer base, but it would and should be primarily be via search, PPC etc I recently had a long debate with someone about this same subject. I mentioned to him my local pizza place could not care about social media, sure it might benefit their businesses, but for local businesses they get the best results from search engines primarily through Google and Yahoo local search. When I mention the word blog or twitter to my local pizza place, they look at me as if I'm an alien. These local business don't even have a website online in this day in age. Social media is a magic bullet for the majority of businesses, but there will always be a few where it has no relevance whatsoever.
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    Mike, I totally agree.

    Social Media is not for all companies. I do think that brands and consumer
    good companies have a clear point-of-entry. But as you wrote, a local
    pizzaria would be better off with a search engine result.

    Regarding the capital goods producers were many aren't in social media, then
    it would, as you say, be nonsense to launch a big social media campaign. If
    they do have some sort of brand though, they might be able to position them
    for their wider stakeholders, both internally and externally, for example
    through a industry blog.

    My point is. Many companies and industries can get something from social
    media, even though its definitely not all which will benefit from major
    campaigns.
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    Michael, these are 5 perfect reasons to understand and use SMM. The traditional website is tired and dying. Blogging is where it's at because of it's freshness and the ability to have comments for instant feedback.

    SMM takes time to understand, implement and refresh, but with the cost being low and the rewards high, it's a must.
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    Agree that all businesses should expand their business online and social marketing is definitely a must to gain appearances.There are more people lurking online than people lurking on the street where the retail store is located.
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    • v
    Should businesses use Social Media Marketing? Without a doubt! The real question they need answered is how to actually do it efficiently.
 

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