Social Media: Advertising vs. Customer Engagement

These days, the question should not be whether or not you should be using social media marketing, but how much you should be using and how to make sure that it blends well with your existing marketing campaigns. Can you really afford to ignore the social media platforms?

Social Media Marketing Opens the Conversation

Advertisements are just messages that are crammed down our throat, blasted out over the airwaves to confront us wherever they may be found-leaving us little choice but to make our statements with our wallets and checkbooks. It’s a one-way, cram down your throat, force-fed messaging system  — shouting what a great buy their product or service is.

But, what if you only needed a minor change in things to make the ad acceptable or the product better?  What if you could engage potential and existing customers in a way that they came to you and asked for your advice?  What if you could learn how to better sell to them in the future? What if they helped you decide WHAT to sell (and at what price) — and the result was more effective marketing and a better bottom line?

Wouldn’t it be better to be able to reach your audience and have them be able to respond?

Communication is a Two Way Street

Instead of the one way direction of the traditional ad, you can use social media marketing to actually listen to your core audience as they discuss:

• Overall brand awareness and impression
• Products and product lines
• Response to recent ad campaigns including suggestions for improvements

Listening to your customers is something you should be taught when you are an entry level sales person. If you can’t stop and listen to what they need, you won’t be able to reach them at all and you are wasting both of your time.

Social Media for Research and Development

One of the advantages of social media marketing is that you have a complete and highly diverse focus group at the ready whenever you might need one. You can ask some of your “group” to test and review products, giving them samples or early release items and then asking them to give full reviews after they are done. You can also use this same group to fill out surveys, which is easier in this setting for a number of reasons:

• People are more comfortable giving their opinion if they see that others feel the same way.
• People are more willing to give an opinion if they think it will be helpful in improving a product in any way.

Social Media for Tech Products

One of the biggest areas that benefits from social media marketing is tech products that allows the tech guys to get out there and intermingle with the people who may be confused, overwhelmed or intimidated by certain tech products. They can reach out to the people on these social media sites and answer questions in real time, which not only satisfies a need for some customers but builds brand trust overall.