In the world of business, marketing has always been of central importance. You can have the biggest and best product in the world but how many sales will you make if no-one knows about it? This sums up why you need to get busy with marketing to see your business succeed. Not only that but marketing gives you a cool way to explain what makes your service unique and have a real conversation with customers.
In days gone by, marketing was all about the traditional methods that had been around for ages. From print ads to letter-drops, this type of marketing was well known and tested. But then something changed within marketing that hit the sector like a tsunami of awesomeness. What was this amazing change?
Digital marketing and all that it encompassed.
Social media and digital marketing
One key aspect of any serious digital marketing strategy now in business is social media management. This involves targeting the social media platforms that the people you want to reach use, like Facebook or Twitter, and marketing your business to them on it.
To begin with, social media was all about people telling others what they had just eaten or why they really didn’t like clowns. As it has grown though, savvy business marketeers realized it gave them direct access to their target audience. Not only could it tell you what they liked or didn’t like, but it allowed you to put your business right in front of more people than ever. This explains just why social media marketing has taken off to the extent it has.
Can you afford to not connect with the global millions who use it each day?
How has social media impacted on marketing specifically?
Although we know that social media has changed the marketing landscape for good and will be around for a long time, here are some specific ways it has shaken things up a bit:
Made marketing into a conversation – one really powerful aspect of social media within marketing is how it has changed the way it works. Before it was pretty much a case of showing your customers what you had to offer and telling them why they needed it. Social media goes much deeper than that though and has pulled marketing along with it. Now any marketing campaign is as much about connecting with customers to find out what they think and what they expect from you. This in turn allows you to act accordingly in response.
- Made your company individual – a very positive change for any marketing efforts or brand building that social media has ushered in is this one. Consumers increasingly do business with companies they feel engaged with or have similar values to them. Social media allows you to do just that as part of a marketing strategy to help win consumer’s trust.
- Given marketing a global reach – pre-social media, your marketing may have stretched to a national campaign but probably not global (unless you are Ford or Shell!). With the advent of social media, all businesses could reach across the planet with their marketing to source new sales. Even better, this was all done with no social media costs involved at all!
- Made employees a valuable marketing asset – one of the great changes social media has brought into marketing is this one. Previously, marketing was always seen as a distinct activity for a businesses marketing team. This has been totally changed with social media though as all employees with a profile are right at the front line of marketing their organisation when interacting with customers.
- Made marketing easier and more open to all businesses – with traditional marketing, many small businesses could not afford the cost of running campaigns or hiring a marketing guru. Social media has changed this forever though as it opens up effective marketing to all businesses for free. This is as true for professionals who want to use social media to market themselves as it is for general business. Dr Erol Onel has a great Twitter feed which shows just how a respected professional can use social media to network with a wider group to showcase more of their personality to people.
Marketing has changed for good
There is no doubt that the digital revolution has changed marketing for good and social media is a massive factor in this. As it is easy to use, free and gives direct access to millions of the people you need to speak with, it really is one of the most effective modern ways to market yourself or your business. With millions of users logging onto social media each day, it is not likely to slow down anytime soon.
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