Social Media Marketing Tips That Works

Marketing your business through social media is quickly becoming a necessity rather than an option. If you’d like to see how this can positively affect your business, keep reading for great ideas on how you can utilize these online platforms to market and advertise your company, product or business.

If you are going to create a social media profile, you must be willing to continuously update it. Your customers may expect regular updates. If you don’t provide these, you may find yourself losing customers. Aim for publishing updates more than a couple times a week.

Always answer to the messages and comments you receive on social networks. Be sure to check for comments and questions at least once a day. They’re easy to miss, so you have to be vigilant.

If you are considering social media marketing, the first thing you should do is sign up with as many social media websites as possible with your preferred account names. These account names should include your business names. This is particularly important for websites like Twitter where your account name is your displayed name. As time goes on, it will become more and more difficult for you to get the account name that you want. Reserve those names now.

Employing social media marketing strategies can be a great way to keep in contact with your customer base, and develop relationships. Customers that friend you on Facebook, or follow you on Twitter do so willingly. They want to hear from you. You can therefore notify them of new upcoming products, sales and discounts, or even just information concerning your business and industry without the fear of being too intrusive.

Monitor the work of your competition. Find them on social networks and pay attention to their methods. You could either try using a similar method or think of something they have not yet started.

When you are introducing a new product or looking for feedback, use social media websites for market research. People love to give feedback about products and are eager to chime in. Their feedback will let you look at your business from the outside through their eyes, seeing the things they want and the things they have yet to find. On top of all this, this feedback is of no cost to your business.

To make the most of social media marketing, respond to questions and comments in a very timely manner. You do not want to sit at your desk refreshing your inbox 24/7, but you do want to check in multiple times per day if possible. Anyone asking questions is either a loyal customer you want to retain and get more business from, or an interested prospect who might open their wallet if you give them some personal attention.

Branding is so important within social media. You need to always incorporate your logo into your social media profile. Use the same color palette on every one of your social media accounts. Your followers will associate these colors with your brands and trust you because you are consistent. Consistency means advantageous branding in identifying yourself and letting you stand out from your competition.

Establish your business’s presences by name, on both Twitter and Facebook. Staking a claim to your business’s name on these sites will prevent someone else from posting content that is meaningless or even damaging to you. Even if you are far from actively employing the account, you’ll have staked your claim to your name.

Taking your business to the next level requires a new wave of marketing efforts that you have not previously tried. Social media marketing could very easily be this new wave that you are searching for. If you use the tips and suggestions here, you can find success in your new marketing efforts.

How to Improve Churn Rate – Part 1

Heard of churn rate? If not, well, yikes! Churn rate, in a nutshell, is the rate at which your big business water bottle is leaking out customers – to put it visually. Businesses with high churn rates are at risk of spinning their wheels or even losing money. For example, a business with a churn rate that is equal to its rate of growth will not only have no net growth, but could also be losing money if it’s paying into an advertising and marketing budget to acquire that customers that help its numbers stay “even.”

Further complicating the situation is the fact that churn rate can actually be measured in a number of different ways. It can be

– The percentage of customers lost over a certain time

– The number of customers lost over a certain time

– The dollar value of recurring business lost

and more.

The bottom, line, however, is that a high churn rate is universally an indicator of the need for some patchwork in your business. This two part series is going to explore several ways in which you can actively combat your churn rate. More specifically, we’ll explore strategies for preempting churn – it is almost universally easier to retain customers than to reacquire them after they are already lost (intuitively, this makes sense).

Step Onto the Scene with a Bang!

One of the first steps to churn rate is to nail the first impression. When someone signs up for your mailing list or subscribes to your services, you want them to be excited about being part of your ‘family’. What you don’t want is for them to just barely be pushed over the decision threshold, ready to back out at the first sign of doubt.

For most online marketers, this means having professional, slick interface, website, and user experience design from the beginning. Just as a job interview is your first chance to make an impression on a potential employer, your website is a first point of contact for impressing new leads. It also means putting forth a killer offer from the beginning that jumps out as a must-have. By extension, this means getting your targeting perfect from the beginning. Landing pages need to be optimized for the search terms and/or channels people use to reach them. Split test the heck out of your pages, and put in the work to make different landing spots for different pathways of entry.

Follow-up On Promises!

Admittedly, anyone can make a good initial impression by writing up a great offer, but your immediate turn rate will largely be determined by how well leads feel their expectations are being delivered on. If you promise a solution, don’t fall into the trap that so many internet marketers fall victim to by only giving away half solutions.

Let’s say you run a product on how to lose weight. Your mailing list opt-in form promises a guide on how to lose your first 10 pounds. Some marketers would send a guide out with the first two steps of a four step method to dropping weight. But not you! No! You’re going to give a complete method that will really start to change scale readouts. Your email series is actually going to be useful (what a concept!).

You’ll be building trust, and, though it’s counterintuitive, customers will be more likely to make a purchase of a weight loss system from you after you’ve already given them something that produces results. What you’re selling can help them build on the progress they’ve already seen. Obviously, this can apply to any niche!

Alright, that’s it for the time being – see you all in part two.