Robotic Marketer Blog Posts from April 2021
3 Mistakes That We Can Learn From Businesses That Don’t Use Social Media (& How To Avoid Them)
Do you know that, according to Facebook’s analytics, there are now more than 50 million small businesses using Facebook Pages to connect with their customers and 4 million of them are paying for Facebook advertising to reach more customers? However, despite the intensive competition in marketing, some businesses are still slow in integrating social media in their marketing strategy. What can we learn from their mistakes?
- Lack of engagement with the target audience
Without a social media presence, it’s very hard to communicate with your customers on a frequent basis. High interaction is perhaps the most important thing social media can do for a business.
Social media enables businesses to easily share daily posts, make announcements or simply keep your customers updated with latest products, offers and events. In the long term, it helps businesses get more personal with customers to build the bond of trust and loyalty.
Not to mention the wide reach of social media, as we are all aware of. Social media usage is ever-increasing with currently 3.5 billion active users, equating to about 45% of the world population. One of the reasons for such huge numbers is the optimization of social media on mobile platforms, especially for on-the-go users.
If the business is not available on social media, business owners would be unaware of what customers are saying about them online. Consumers nowadays won’t hesitate to share their experiences on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. And being online can help you monitor negative feedbacks and improve your products/ services.
- Inefficient marketing spending
Throughout its life, businesses will have to invest in some form of marketing channels, and the truth is, online marketing is much more affordable than traditional, brick-and-mortar marketing like print, television, radio spots and other display ads. Paying for ad space like TV commercials is not cheap and thus, traditional marketing can be out of the financial reach of many small business owners.
On the other hand, social media is the most cost-effective way to promote your business, as every organization has the chance of catching the audience’s attention on the same platform. Of course, there will always be additional costs associated with getting professional help in social media marketing – but it’s much more bearable than producing TV commercials and airing them on prime time.
Without any social media account, businesses would find it hard to spread the word about new products/ services or any announcements they need to make. Booking an advertising slot on radio, TV or prints can’t be approved instantly – therefore businesses lose the power of real-time marketing.
- Difficult data collection
Without technology, it’s more difficult to measure ROI. For example, how can you estimate the number of people seeing a print ad on the street? Seems impossible.
Social media is actually insightful once you get used to it: social media analytics shows how users to view, share and engage with your content and helps you optimize your content.
When it comes to social media like Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube, data and results are recorded daily. Online platforms enable business users to easily target an audience by providing detailed analysis of customer’s behaviors, age, locations, interests, hobbies and personality traits – as well as track customer engagement and interaction rates, reach percentage, sales numbers and conversions. Almost all the statistics a marketer needs!
As such, it’s essential to match your goals to actual metrics and measure them on a frequent basis.
How to avoid those mistakes?
- Be on social media (now)
Digital marketing is becoming more important than ever. But not every business owner is aware of how vital digital channels are for expanding business reach and connecting with audiences.
Social media marketing is more affordable, has high interaction and engagement rate, produces measurable results and targets more accurately. If you’re late in the social media marketing game, you’d better hurry.
Today, we are living in a technology world. Not to mention there are a lot of changes in the business landscape since COVID-19 hit the world and the global pandemic is shaping customer behaviors in many ways. For example:
- 45% of customers surveyed by PwC indicated that their mobile phone has become a shopping channel.
- The engagement with mobile ad increases by 15% during the pandemic
- Social media usage consumption rose by 58%.
- Do social media marketing the right way
OK, are you ready to adopt social media marketing now? Setting up an account is easy, however not all business is using social media the right way.
There are few key points to remember:
- Have a specific strategy
Remember, marketing on social media is not a short-term task: it requires long-term commitment to achieve such digital success. That is why a social media marketing plan becomes increasingly essential in the long run.
- Study your audience
You must first identify your core customers (regarding age, location, hobbies & interests, certain behaviors) and tailor your social media activities accordingly. Once you’ve decided on a target market, figuring out relevant social media channels and adjusting marketing messages becomes much easier.
- Not all about sales
Instead of constantly promoting your brand, product or services, let’s see social media as your top-of-the-sales-funnel stage where customers get to know you. Focus on building a loyal fan base first before driving them to your website where the sales actually begin.
- Track analytics frequently
What makes social media more advanced compared to other traditional marketing methods is its measurable results, which are conveniently provided by social network platforms. Otherwise, you can find a third-party analytics tool and assess your performance on a daily or weekly basis.
What Are The Differences Between Sales & Marketing – And How To Align Them
The two words “sales” and “marketing” are often used interchangeably in a business environment. But do you know they carry very different goals and functions?
5 LinkedIn Mistakes You Need to Stop Making
LinkedIn marketing is the practice of using LinkedIn to make connections, improve brand awareness, generate leads, promote business relationships and partnerships, share content and drive traffic to your website. LinkedIn is an integral part of a successful B2B marketing strategy to expand professional networks.
When you use LinkedIn to market your business, you gain access to useful tools and features related to analytics connections, brand-building, and many others. It is important to build your LinkedIn presence in a business format to leverage the platform for your marketing.
Here are 5 LinkedIn mistakes you need to stop making when marketing your business on LinkedIn.
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Posting without a clear strategy
Businesses struggle to implement effective social media marketing and content marketing for their business on LinkedIn.
There are two major problems with posting without a clear strategy. First, your result metrics will reflect the quality of the content you post on LinkedIn. Publishing any content to gain a quantity target will often lead to inadequate results.
Businesses need to answer these questions before building a LinkedIn marketing strategy and posting it online:
- Does this interest your target audience?
- Does this add value to your audience?
Secondly, if your content isn’t well-thought-out, your business could fail to deliver its key message. This will lead your audience to be disinterested in your brand.
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Being overly promotional
Businesses can easily turn people off or make them less interested in their content by being overly promotional. Instead, understand the needs of your audience and deliver content that they want.
Focus on building a relationship with your target audience. Engage with your audience in a manner that makes them interested in your business. Follow the 80-20 rule, where 80% of your posts provide value to your customers and 20% of your posts promote your business. This rule will create more impact on your promotional posts along with your informative posts.
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Acting as a Robot
Some businesses are rigid to follow their social media calendars on a strict basis. There should be room for creativity and inspiration. When you use LinkedIn for business marketing it is important to humanize your brand. Essentially, giving an opportunity to your audience to get to know you professionally and personally.
For example, you don’t have to always share a blog, a quote, or your promotional posts on a fixed day. In your business, you also share something else for your audience to engage with your brand.
That is why it is important to also share business updates, news and pictures of you, your team, and your clients to humanize your brand. The more people get to know you as a person and not just as a business, they are more responsive to your products and services.
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Not being consistent and regular
Another LinkedIn marketing mistake to avoid is not being consistent and managing your LinkedIn presence on a daily basis. To prevent this mistake there are two things to consider.
First, you should log in every day and publish an update. Build your network, accept, and send LinkedIn connection requests. Build relationships and engage with your target audience, respond to personal messages. Managing your LinkedIn presence daily is a way to manage your reputation too, especially in a B2B marketing setting.
Second, your business should be consistent with its brand presence on LinkedIn. This means keeping on brand and avoiding disruptions in your daily interactions.
If your business promises to share 3 times a week, make sure you deliver it to your audience. Maintain consistency in everything involving your brand, be it posting in a timely fashion or maintain your business tone of voice. This way, you’ll be noticed and easily remembered.
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Not leveraging LinkedIn Business tools
When using a platform like LinkedIn to market your business, it is essential to look at the tools available at LinkedIn and leverage them to generate leads. LinkedIn tools include LinkedIn advertising which allows your business to market to anyone on LinkedIn.
Another effective tool on LinkedIn is LinkedIn groups which allow you to create your community of people around similar interest. LinkedIn also has a feature wherein you get the business contact information of anyone on LinkedIn. However, these features might be paid under the LinkedIn premium account, such as LinkedIn InMail.
Mistakes are a part of business, but you can avoid these when marketing on LinkedIn. It is important to be authentic, build relationships, engage with your audience, be consistent, and leverage LinkedIn tools to achieve more valuable results.
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