Social media marketing is all about making your target audience (potential customers) aware of your presence and service(s) on a social media platform through various engagement strategies. Honestly, it all boils down to sending your target audience to your offer(s). Across various social media platforms, you will see successful marketers using many different strategies and displaying many different characteristics from being funny and entertaining to being arrogant and boastful. There really is no silver bullet method to success in generating leads, so I won’t even pretend to have one in this post. What I will do is offer three tips of advice for social media marketing from my perspective based on what I have seen work and not work so far.
1) Stand out from the crowd
Let’s imagine you are walking into a pet shop to buy a new dog for you or your kids if you have any, and all of the dogs are either sitting there doing nothing or sniffing each others butt (you know, basic dog stuff, right?), but there is one dog in the corner doing back-flips. Which of these dogs are most likely to stand out from the crowd? And being that you walked into this store to buy only one dog that you felt offered something the other dogs didn’t, which of these dogs are you most likely to buy? I know this might be a horrid example to some, but the point I’m trying to make is that in order to generate leads you have to get noticed, and in order to convert leads into sales, you have to offer value over the next person offering the same thing(s) you are offering. In a nutshell, in order to be the fan favorite amongst your target audience, you have to be the flipping dog of your industry. One of the worst marketing mistakes you can make is to be average.
2) Give away something for free
Whenever someone says this strategy won’t work, remind them that this is the same strategy that lead AOL to become the largest internet service provider in the United States from the '90s up until the early 2000s. Giving away a free gift is one of the best ways to generate sales because it lowers a person's defense, and in some cases, gives them a better look at testing or examining what you are offering at no cost (or risk) to them. In the online marketing business, this e-book, video, newsletter, etc. that you are giving away for free is usually referred to as a “lead magnet” because it is so effective at drawing people into your offer.
3) Find what works best for you!
Last, but certainly not least – find what works best for you! Email marketing might work for some online business owner in Ohio who recently quit his job as a plumber - email marketing might not work best for some blogger in Delaware who is already having an ample amount of success financially through article marketing - none of the above strategies might work for some charismatic, very outgoing salesperson who is already making a ton of money online attracting leads through video marketing. The list of possible case-scenarios can go on and on. The point is, what works best for someone else might not work best for you, and vice versa. You have to evaluate your skills and value to your target audience before you can put together a successful marketing strategy. Keep this in mind while knowing that around 97% of people fail in internet marketing.
Last, but certainly not least – find what works best for you! Email marketing might work for some online business owner in Ohio who recently quit his job as a plumber - email marketing might not work best for some blogger in Delaware who is already having an ample amount of success financially through article marketing - none of the above strategies might work for some charismatic, very outgoing salesperson who is already making a ton of money online attracting leads through video marketing. The list of possible case-scenarios can go on and on. The point is, what works best for someone else might not work best for you, and vice versa. You have to evaluate your skills and value to your target audience before you can put together a successful marketing strategy. Keep this in mind while knowing that around 97% of people fail in internet marketing.
