You wouldn’t try to sell a swimsuit at the North Pole. You’d take it to the market that’s looking for it – somewhere hot or at least somewhere people want to swim. That probably sounds like an obvious statement, but the same rule applies online and yet, businesses are still making that mistake with their online activities.
A social media presence is a key component of your inbound strategy, but if you’re not using it right, you’re not going to generate the site visits or leads you need to grow your business. Businesses looking to promote themselves online need to take the time to understand where their ideal customers are spending their time online in order to build awareness of their brand. There is a wealth of information online about who is using which network that can be broken down into specific criteria like age, gender, and level of education (just to name a few).
This isn’t to say that you should abandon all other networks in favour of one; it’s still possible to generate visitors and leads from places that don’t primarily feature your target audience (there are people who participate in Polar Bear dips, after all) but focusing on the one or two that do will make your marketing more effective and give you a better ROI.
Pretty much every social network has a paid option to help promote your page or feed. Using the paid promotional feature of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn can help put your content in front of the right audience by allowing you to specifically target them based on their likes, favourites, interests and even their own content (I, for example, see a lot of ads for Star Trek merchandise). The networks will also help you to generate the results you’re looking for when building your campaign, whether it’s likes, downloads, or conversions.
Just as important as going where your customers are is making sure the content you’re posting is something that is both interesting to them and related to what you have to offer. Don’t just show them what you want to sell, give them reason to engage with you. Maybe you’ll run a contest, offer a coupon, or create a downloadable ebook. Whatever it is be sure to make it something of value that speaks to your ideal crowd.
Once you understand where your ideal customers are hanging out online, you can start developing an effective content marketing strategy that will drive traffic to your site and generate leads to help you reach your goals. Not sure where to start? The marketing team at H&C Inc. can help. Let's talk.