103 – Marketing Today; Social Media and Customer Focus

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Today is the episode on marketing today. Marketing, I’m gonna break it all down into two parts. Originally I thought this was going be one piece, but it turns out that it’s just too big. And one of the things, and reason that I want to separate it is, there’s not just what’s going on today. As I’ve mentioned many times, technology is moving just so fast that we really have to plan, or at least be aware, of what’s happening towards the future. So, we will be taking a look at a second part next week, and this week we’re talking about what’s going on today, what you can do.

Now, marketing is different than it has been years ago, not in the sense that the customer has changed at all, not at all. However, everybody is able to focus so much better, and refine their marketing to such a degree, because of all the information available today, and the new ways of marketing that are available today. So you have to really know your customer better, and that’s where, really, marketing today starts, and begins very much with customer service, customer satisfaction, and learning from those experiences and those customers.

This will all give you the ideas, of course, on how to attract many new customers and expand your market greatly, but the idea is to first understand them well through those means. Now, that means leveraging your community, networking with the customers, whether you have groups or information or whatever, run competitions. That is, if there’s any way you can put together some sort of competition, or experience, or something that the customer can have with your product or with you, that can be a great way to both build loyalty and gain information. Starting off today, YouTube, webinars, et cetera, you don’t want to waste time, or other people’s time, but you see so much about how you can turn around and learn just about anything on YouTube today, or eHow, et cetera.

So one of the ideas is, of course, to put some out on your own. Yes, there may be others out there. Can you do it better? Can you do it well? Can you do it in such a way to demonstrate your product and how to use it; not selling at all, just engaging with the customer so that you become an authority. If you become an authority, or at least thought of as an authority, particularly if you’re in a local area, you become more attractive. If you’re worldwide, it’s the same thing. So the idea is to give it away for free; that is a free class, free seminar related to your product, doing a demo.

You could be a local hardware store. Recently, interestingly, and that’s why I mention it, I was asked how could they survive. They were talking about, you know, there’s Lowe’s and Home Depot, and how are they gonna survive. Well, first of all, keep in mind, they probably can’t survive on price. So what do they do? They have to have other dimensions; know and understand your customer well, maybe you can survive or do better, or at least lengthen your lifespan, by turning around and being more informative. That is, teaching, more involvement with the customer, more involvement with the person walking through your store. Now, also look at who’s coming in, or who is arriving as a customer, who’s been thinking about you.

Learn from other businesses; what are they doing? Competitive analysis, again, is a great way to learn a great deal. What do they do, what do they present, how are they doing? Just because they advertise a certain way it doesn’t mean that it’s working, but it does give you some ideas. It does not have to be your industry, for some things. For example, when I was doing a lot of work with the automotive industry, what I used to keep, really files and files of, are the top advertisements for major hotels and luxury items. Why? Because what they were selling was style, luxury, et cetera. So that gave me some great insights and ideas also, that you just relate over to another industry.

Today the big thing of course is using videos to market your business. You use videos, whether it’d be on YouTube, as I mentioned before, on how-to or demos, or whether it’s just informative, that you’re trying to get out there to people. Make sure, by the way, that your website you built, and of course you’ve built a nice one. Is it accessible to mobile users. I’ve run into a few recently where I go to look at them on my phone, or my iPad. They’re so distorted. The way they adapt to mobile just makes it very poor to read. Make sure that most people are able to reach you through mobile, because most people are on mobile, and it is how most people are getting their information. That’s only going to increase. But I’ve seen numbers like 70% of people’s interactions are on mobile. And I don’t mean by chats, et cetera, I mean with websites.

Now, social is sort of becoming not only next, but probably the current internet and marketing organism. So social media marketing is very important for all businesses. Now, you’ll have to have content, so you’ve got your content on your website, you’ve got videos, or how-tos, or demos, or other things that you’re doing there, then look at social media. It can be overwhelming, you’ve got Pinterest, and Instagram, and Snapchat, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and who knows what next. The key is, start out with one at a time until you get the hang of it. But take a look and see who it’s for.

Now, I don’t mean you, you’re unimportant. The customer’s the one that’s important. What you wanna see is, who is the person that’s using it, and how they’re using it. You know, if it’s a bunch of teenagers using it to send funny pictures across to each other and you’re not in that market, that’s a different scenario. But almost any type of social media platform is useful or marketable for some group, for almost any group. Now, you know, Pinterest, yes, it has recipes, tons of recipes. But it also has things that are sort of philosophical, motivational, et cetera. See who it is, what it is. In that case it’s primarily women, is that your market? But pick one, start it up, get it going, and as you’re doing it, address that what’s expected on that platform with an editorial calendar.

That’s right, make sure that you’re seeing what it is and how often you should post. And I say should post, because it turns out some things you should be posting, like twitter, maybe you’re doing it four or five times a day. But on Instagram, maybe you’re only posting once a day. So, there are differences, and see what kind of content, in the case of twitter, is retweeted or liked, et cetera, within your group. Well, you can find out how to do that. You wanna build and use your social media for brand loyalty, brand recognition, and authority, and getting traffic. However, don’t appear to be selling. In other words, be of interest. You want them to be interested in you, you’re not attacking them with an ad like Crazy Eddie on TV … Most of you younger people probably don’t remember that, but it was a wacky commercial.

Now, there’s plenty of places that you can find out how to get started on twitter, or Instagram, et cetera. I’ll be going over some of those separately, completely separate from this podcast, but you can learn that fairly easily. Start out, as I say, with one or two. Decide what it is that you’re doing. If you’re that hardware store you’re probably more interested in doing stuff on YouTube right now, and maybe Facebook, where you’re expressing some ideas that show on YouTube on how to do it, but you’re addressing people that have certain problems on Facebook. If you’re a manufacturer of some kind, you’re probably, business to business, or have a business to business relationship, LinkedIn may be your primary target and primary place, and there you’ll be having posts and articles that lead informationally to people to better understand your industry, your product, and your process.

Anyway, get started and use existing technology for marketing today. Next week we’ll talk about a little bit more detail on how to build relationships with people, and what’s taking place that are changing. What changes might be expected over the near future. Thank you very much, go to LifeUnsettled.com, sign on to the website, get the most recent updates on an ongoing basis. We’ll keep you informed, and I’ll also start sending you out some of those other things that I was talking about, getting familiar with some of the social media and some other ideas.