Social media is about a relationship with your customer.
Social media is a vital part of every company’s marketing campaign. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, and many other social media platforms must be considered when a company wants to reach its target audience. These are necessary and to ignore them, you do so at your company’s peril.
However, social media isn’t, or shouldn’t be about social media. It’s about having a relationship with your customers.
Social media is only a tool to let you engage with your audience, who is allowing you the privilege to interact with them. It is about creating relationships, and as in any relationship, there must be trust. Social media allows you to demonstrate, in one way, your value to your customer. It also allows you to tell your story – who you are, why you are different – defining your brand.
Marketers must always know who their customer is, which means knowing or anticipating what the customers wants and expects through interacting via a social media. Intelligent marketers grasp the fact that a social media is only a bridge to the customer. When creating a social media strategy, marketers will take into account how the customer communicates, thereby seeking to listen more to the customer.
Marketers will also know which platform their target audience is on and how to reach out to them via the lingua franca of the specific platform. Marketers can do this by understanding the experiences of their customers. It’s also important to remember data is not the most important thing in mobile marketing. Data is all well and good, but what’s the use of gathering as much data as you can’t have a genuine relationship with your consumer?
Marketers must ensure there is consistency in their message and actions; any contradiction in messaging and action will dissuade current and potential customers. Even though social media was used to begin the relationship, you are in a live relationship, not a virtual one, and there must be trust.
Want to reach your target audience? Contact SPARKS! and we’ll help you.
