Is your Business Taking Advantage of Social Media?
Is your business lagging behind with the social media phenomenon? If it is, your business could be losing some great new opportunities that could catapult its bottom line to greater heights. Whether big or small, any business is striving to stay on top, especially those in a cutthroat industry, such as software development and other IT-based companies.
To get a much bigger piece of the action, businesses implement every tried and tested strategy they can to pull in customers. Conventional marketing strategies include print and broadcast ads, networking, trade fairs and the occasional distribution of promotional discounts. These tactics, while highly effective, can take a toll on businesses’ annual budgets. In a very competitive environment, running costly promotions could prove detrimental in the long run as more and more people are turning almost exclusively to the Internet for information.
Hence, with the advent of the Internet, a new marketing channel was born. And as the Internet matured, social networking sites proliferated, pulling in hundreds of millions of members, connecting and interacting instantaneously in ways that seemed impossible a mere 15 years ago. Now that social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have collectively covered almost every demographic, small business marketing has been given an enormous opportunity to target large samples of specific consumer segments. Companies with products designed specifically for businesses, such as IT companies, can now directly promote their merchandise to a group of CEOs within their target market, such as the way LinkedIn’s advertising campaign works.
Perhaps the most important aspect of social media marketing that makes it so relevant and powerful is its inherent capability of engaging consumers. With Social Influence Marketing, an important aspect of social media marketing that utilizes social media in all aspects of a marketing campaign, a business is able to involve targeted customers in conceptualizing, developing and implementing ideas towards its realization into becoming an actual product or service. That is why in some instances, social media marketing is also called Conversation Marketing. It involves the entire market in driving a business, as opposed to traditional marketing where only the companies influence the movement of the market, leaving the consumers as passive receivers of marketing messages.
In social media marketing, the success of each business that utilizes this strategy rests not only on how it conveys its message to the consumers, but also on how it ‘listens’ to the conversation within the market. With social media marketing, the focus has now been taken away from businesses, and is now directed to the market itself.
Even big businesses are now warming up to the idea of joining in on the conversations within the online social space. Companies, such as in the case of Dell, has greatly benefited from the conversation that went on within the social media space through its Twitter page. Through social media, Dell was able to effectively engage its target consumers, create awareness on how their products fared and increased sales and customer retention.
There are more beneficial business applications that can be applied to social media other than engaging consumers and improving the company’s bottom line. Employers have also utilized social media to track down, screen and employ highly qualified workers. Hiring a hugely qualified staff is both a tedious and costly undertaking. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in executive search fees just to get the right candidate for the right job. LinkedIn, sometimes touted as the Facebook for professionals, offers a great opportunity for employers to gainfully employ the right candidate, even without the help of third-party recruiters. With LinkedIn’s more than 45 million members and innovative search capabilities, hand-picking the suitable candidate for the job has never been easier.
Whether looking to cut costs on marketing, or searching for the right candidate for the job without incurring huge costs, taking a close look at how your business could benefit from social media marketing could be worth your while. You can find All Covered on Twitter. To learn more about IT strategy and how All Covered can help you business go to All Covered or call 866-446-1133.
Andreas KrebsMarketing Manager, All Covered, Inc.
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