When it comes to advertising, Facebook is now mainstream. I was interested to hear from a client, that he has realised that all his new customers are coming from digital marketing. He decided to cancel all his print advertising, cut back on his radio advertising and use the bulk of his budget for digital marketing. This will consist of Facebook campaigns as well as Google Adwords.
The big three: TV, newspapers and radio all have declining advertising revenues with newsprint being the hardest hit. TV remains powerful but is only for the corporates who can afford it. Radio does come out with a few good package deals which smaller businesses can afford and is quite effective with strong followings at certain times of the day. The decline of newspapers is well documented with only the more senior members of our society bothering to subscribe to them.
The rise and rise of digital marketing can be attributed to two main things. The first one is that it is affordable with only $200 to $300 per month needed to run a successful campaign. The second reason is that the results are measurable in great detail, with extensive analytics available to track the success of each dollar spent. With newspapers, one doesn’t know how many people actually saw an advertisement let alone read it.
The corporate world is now changing from outsourcing their digital advertising to employing social media marketers as part of their communications team. Smaller businesses don’t have the budget for this extra salary, but they can outsource their social media marketing. It needs to be part of a business advertising budget. If you are not on social media, then your competitor certainly is, which means you are losing market share. Social media marketing is like having another sales rep on the team and a very cheap sales rep at that. This sales rep is working 24 hours, never stops for a coffee or long lunch breaks and never takes holidays.
Through social media, advertisers can engage with their potential customers to achieve a two-way communication. Nowadays, it is not so much about advertising, but about developing relationships. In the same way that your sales people develop relationships with your clients, so does social media.
Developing relationships is a step by step process which is best done by specialists in this field. It is a carefully orchestrated process, understood by modern marketers but easily mishandled by business owners not practised in the art. As with all relationships, regular contact is most important. This is the part that most business owners do not have the time to do. A specialist is needed to nurture those relationships using acceptable techniques as understood by social media followers. Done well, the results will far exceed most business owners’ expectations.