This blog post is a preview from our new eBook, How To Transform Your SMB Company With Social Media Marketing. This comprehensive eBook will give you a step-by-step guide to managing a social media marketing program that will grow your company, including chapters on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Social media has become an indispensable part of life in America. If you dont agree with that statement, consider these statistics:
- 27% of internet time in the US is spent on social networking sites source: Experian
- 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision source: Nielsen
- 52% of all marketers found a customer via Facebook in 2013 source: HubSpot
- 43% of all marketers found a customer via LinkedIn in 2013 source: HubSpot
- 36% of all marketers found a customer via Twitter in 2013 source: HubSpot
If youre reading this eBook, youve probably come to the conclusion that social media marketing is important to your business. Congratulations! Read the rest of this eBook for a guide to setting up and managing a social media marketing program that will help grow your business.
Social media marketing for SMB companies
In many ways, the environment for growing your SMB company is challenging. The continuing aftermath of the great recession has changed the corporate purchasing process. The C-suite looks for broad agreement among their staff and they want meticulous research conducted on all major purchase decisions. Gone are the days when CEOs bought from their golfing buddies to the exclusion of anyone else.
Turbulent times create opportunities for nimble, agile competitors. Unlike our enterprise and corporate competitors, we have our ears to ground and know what our ideal customers want. Were lean and nimble and we can turn on a dime to provide what the market wants and needs, unlike our big corporate competitors. While their front-line people are engrossed in corporate politics and wondering if theyll have a job next week, were out hustling to grow our companies.
An integrated social media marketing process propels you to the top of the list when buyers are researching options. A recent study by the Corporate Executive Board found that the average buyer completes 57% of their purchase process before they have any contact with a sales person. They conduct research with search engine queries and through social media referrals. If they dont find you when theyre performing their research, youre toast!
Although I dont recommend you give up telemarketing or unsolicited email marketing, youre much better off with an inbound marketing approach integrated into your existing sales process. In fact, HubSpots 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report found that social media produces almost double the leads of telemarketing, trade shows and direct mail. Whats more social media is a great way to drive leads for your seminars and other offline lead generation activities.
Social media is most effective when integrated with a broader inbound marketing strategy
Social media is not an end in itself. It is most effective when used to spread your marketing content and drive leads to landing pages on your website. Remember, your prospects and customers are performing research about solutions to their problems and pain points. What do they look for when the conduct research?
- Blog posts
- eBooks and whitepapers
- videos
- webinars
- case studies
Most, if not all, of this content will reside on your website. Social media lead generation occurs when a potential buyer clicks through to your website from your social media post and exchanges contact information for your content offer. Here is a graphical depiction of the lead generation process courtesy of HubSpot.
In addition to lead generation, social media can be integrated into your other marketing efforts. For example, you should include social sharing buttons on your marketing emails, landing pages, eBooks, whitepapers and blog posts.
Theres no better endorsement for your marketing content than when a third-party shares it on social media. In addition, social media shares, likes and +1s help with search engine optimization. For example, when someone likes your blog post on Facebook, Google interprets the like as a positive signal on the quality of the post. These social signals are now part of Googles ranking algorithm and help you get found by potential buyers.
3 requirements for an effective social media marketing effort
Social media requires a focused, daily effort. Period. If youre not prepared to invest the time and resources necessary to do social media right, you wont get the business results you need. If you cant do it internally, outsource your social media marketing to a consultant that can deliver results.
Its also important to understand that it takes time to get results. You need to develop domain authority for your website and increase the reach of your social media accounts. Youre not going to start a Facebook page and have 1,000 likes the first week. If you invest the necessary time and resources, you will build up a following for your company and generate business leads.
Here are three prerequisites to an effective social media marketing program.
Management support and buy-in
Probably the most important predictor of success for your social media marketing is the support and direction from your company leadership. As a leader, you need to buy in to the potential of social media marketing and embed it throughout your company. You need to emphasize the importance of social media to your long-term businesses success throughout your organization and implement processes to make sure it supports your sales and customer service delivery. If you dont see social media as an essential element of your business, you shouldnt waste time or resources dabbling in it.
Social media manager
Many people think social media marketing is free because it doesnt cost anything to create profiles on the social networks. What they dont understand is that to get results from your social media marketing, you need to invest significant time resources from someone who knows what theyre doing. At a minimum, you will need 25% of a full-time equivalent to run your social media marketing. Depending on the content youll be creating, the 25% FTE could quickly expand into a full-time position.
The biggest mistake many businesses make when they start social media marketing is to make the receptionist the social media manager. After all, shes in her twenties and is active on Facebook, so she's perfect to run the social media marketing program, right? While she may be a good social media manager (probably not), its important that your social media manager:
- understands your sales process and how to ingegrate it with social media marketing
- knows your corporate culture and embeds it into your social media marketing
- understands and uses social media best practices
- understands you customer service process and how social media can support it
Many small businesses outsource their digital marketing (which includes social media) to maximize the return on their social media investment. As a rule of thumb, Gartner found that businesses spend an average of 2.5% of revenue on digital marketing. That percentage is generally higher for new businesses and businesses with smaller revenue bases.
Social media software
The beauty of internet marketing strategies like social media is that you can measure everything you do. This lets you optimize your results by doing more of what works and adjusting or jettisoning initiatives that arent producing. Social media software is the tool you need to measure your efforts. Social media software will:
let you schedule social media posts for maximum reach
monitor mentions of your company or industry by others on social media
manage your social media community
analyze relevant metrics for your social media marketing
We use and recommend two software products:
HubSpot is an all-in-one internet marketing product that manages all aspects of your internet marketing including keyword research, SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, lead nurturing and marketing analytics.
HootSuite is social media marketing software that manages all aspects of your social media efforts. While HootSuite is a great product, it doesnt include the complete internet marketing functionality that HubSpot does.
So now that you know what you need to produce results, lets talk about developing a strategy.