Driving New Sales and Customer Acquisition
Everyone is currently focused on social media marketing for their business – but why? Research indicates that email marketing remains much more effective and surpasses social media marketing in every way. Customer acquisition through email marketing has increased four times over the last four years. Email marketing now makes up 7% of all new customer acquisitions. While organic search on Google is still the strongest marketing and acquisition channel, representing nearly 16%, all other social media platforms fall short. Facebook is minimal and a waste of time for customer acquisition, and Twitter is even less effective.
Plan for Mobile in your Email Marketing Strategy
Mobile devices are now a permanent part of our lives, with 45% of users checking their email on smartphones and other mobile devices. This creates a challenge for many companies’ email marketing efforts. If an email does not display correctly or has issues on a mobile device, 65% of mobile users will unsubscribe. It’s essential to optimize your email marketing messages for all platforms to ensure the success of your strategy.
Losing Sight of Home Plate while Rounding Third
Too many companies are looking for the next best thing and losing sight of the most important and proven methods of marketing their businesses. Being the first company to use a new social website or a new marketing strategy isn’t always the best idea, especially when you forget the core marketing practices that are proven to work. Being well ranked organically, utilizing PPC, email marketing and insightful blog articles to drive sales should be at the top of your list. Don’t get blinded by all the hype of the “next best thing” when it comes to marketing your business. Stick with what works and try to improve upon them. While social media might be anenhancer to your overall marketing strategy, it shouldn’t be what you focus on to drive sales and new customer acquisitions.
Is Social Media Marketing a Huge Waste of Time?
I think social media as a whole is a monstrous waste of time in an attempt to acquire new customers. Let’s look at Coca-Cola and their 50+ million Facebook fans as an example. They seem to do a good job in providing a constant flow of content in their social media stream. How many of Coke’s 50+ million followers do you think they’ll reach with a status update? How about 5%? If Coca-Cola wants to attempt to reach the other 95% of their Facebook fans, they will have to pay Facebook to do so. Who wins in this scenario? I can give you a hint – It’s not Coke. This isn’t 2008 and the perceived “Like” value isn’t what you think it is. Likes are worthless, well almost worthless.
Focus Your Marketing on What Actually Works and Generates Results
The secret to good social media marketing: Sell and deliver good products and offer great services. If you can’t trick people into “Liking” your brand, maybe you can try to make them actually – you know – like your brand. How you ask? Under Promise and Over Deliver. Sell and deliver quality products and offer services that are really, really good. That’s not to say you should completely forsake social media marketing communication altogether. Every once in a while if you have something interesting to say, then by all means use Twitter or Facebook to say it. But stop posting pictures of cute kittens in an attempt win cheap, meaningless Likes.