Grow Your Business Using Social Media

By Scott Martin

Social Media has revolutionized how our culture interacts.  Some of those changes present opportunities for businesses to increase their online visibility, engage with customers and even drive new business.

To be really effective at using Social Media for your business, you should focus on the following priorities:

1) Establish Your Presence – There are numerous Social Media sites to choose from.  Most businesses should focus their efforts on Facebook, Twitter & Google+ as the primary places to start.  Each of these are highly relevant to both Google’s search algorithm (a key element of making sure you business is highly visible) and they have highly engaged and very large sets of users.   The key is to set all of these up in a way that comprehensively showcases the products and services offered.  It is not enough to just setup a Plumbing Contractor profile.  You must also explain all the services you offer and do so in a way that uses the keywords that would be used by a prospective new customer.  So a plumber would obviously highlight their plumbing services capabilities, but would also discuss hot water heaters, sewer line inspection and clean-out, faucets & fixtures, septic tank installation and pumping as well as Emergency Services offered (to name a few).

2) Build an Audience – Now that your presence is established, you must focus on getting as many of that sites users as possible to connect to your business.  On Facebook, this is a “Like”, on Twitter it is a “Follower” and on Google+ it is people connected in your “Circles”.  Each of these connections is essentially and “opt-in” for your content and marketing.  There are a variety of ways to build an audience, but the most crucial is for you to generate engaging and useful content that makes people want to connect with you.  Generating content that is helpful, useful and attractive or magnetic is the key.  You have to resist the temptation to sell… no one uses social media to be sold to, so you have to be strategic about your content.  Generating content that explains the benefits of tankless hot water heaters might be considered helpful and educational.  Generating a tweet that reminds followers it is time to change the filters in your Air Conditioning units and simultaneously offering a $25 coupon for those very same services would likely be considering informative and special (due to the coupon).

3) Create Marketing Campaigns – Now that you have a base of connections, start to think through specific marketing campaign goals.  Initially, for example, one of your campaigns could be focused on getting more followers on Twitter, while later it could be to drive new business sales through your Twitter audience.  So, as you start to think through campaigns, get creative.  If you want users to do something for you (like share your post with their friends, family and connections (thereby extending its’ reach), entice them to do so by offering something.  You can get even more leverage from your offerings by making them bigger, but only winnable via a lottery or drawing.  The sky is the limit with your campaigns.  Get creative and think like a marketer.

So while Social Media presents a very affordable marketing platform for businesses, you cannot avoid putting some effort into them.  There is nothing cruise control about this platform.  You must work it to make sure you have an ever-growing audience and your campaigns are accomplishing your sales & marketing goals.

Investing in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) even with a constrained budget

With today’s economy, business are always looking for ways to “save” on expenses.  That makes perfect sense when there is limited GDP growth, competition is fierce and margins are constantly under attack.  Many times, this method is over-applied to areas of your income statement that are revenue generators.  It is important not to confuse accounting and business operations.  From an accounting stand-point, Marketing is an expense.  From a business operations stand-point, Marketing should be viewed as a revenue-generating, return-producing INVESTMENT.  Any Marketing that is not achieving those goals, should be closely scrutinized because when Marketing solutions are done properly, they will produce revenue and they will generate a positive Return on Investment (ROI).

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most direct forms of Marketing that, when implemented properly, will produce an ROI.  Even when your budget is limited or even anemic, there are ways to implement PPC so that it will achieve your financial objectives.

The first step in beginning any PPC campaign is figuring out what budget you have to work with.  Once you have figured out that number, there are some key decisions that will need to be made to ensure your PPC campaign produces the results you are seeking.

The first thing you should evaluate is the profitability of your products and services.  This involves a combination of two things…. The gross margin each product/service produces and the volume of that product/service you are operationally setup to handle.  So for example, you may make a very large gross margin on selling Tankless Hot Water Heaters, but you may only be setup to install one of those every 2 days due to the qualifications and availability of your installation crew.  Look at both and isolate the highest profit producing products/services that you can also support in volume and you are off to a great start.

The second thing you should look at is the geographic parameters of where you obtain your most profitable customers.  You may serve the entire Metropolitan area, but you may also make the lions-share of your profit from 3 zip codes.  In looking at this time and time again, the 80/20 rule seems to almost always prove out here…. 80% of the profit comes from 20% of the servable market.  Identify your most profitable geography and focus on generating more business from them.

Now that you have these elements in place, you can make some decisions.  With a constrained budget, you also want to constrain the scope of your PPC campaign.  You do that by focusing on the most profitable products/services and also the most profitable geography.  The goal here is to keep the scope of the campaign consistent with the size of the budget.  To borrow a fishing analogy, we are using our best bait to fish in the smallest pond that is stocked with the maximum amount of the most desirable fish.

In closing, remember that most businesses start out their PPC investments with a small budget and then grow them over time.  PPC works when implemented methodically and strategically and the results are measured and monitored.