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With the rise of social media marketing, there has been lots going on – buzz, excitement, great examples of creative marketing and big promises that just aren’t realistic or being kept. This article is meant to give a balanced approach amongst all the noise and to show that although social media is a great marketing channel, it’s true effectiveness can only be attained when it is used correctly and in the right context.
What is the role of social media?
Social Media is a brilliant marketing channel to be able to reach your customers and communicate to them in ways you never could before – all for low cost/free.
Sounds great right? So what’s the problem?
The problem is that because it is a fairly new medium, a lot of people have jumped on it and made it the main focus – totally disregarding the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is that social media is a marketing tool. If it is a marketing tool then it must belong in your marketing plan. Sound simple? Of course it is. So we must ask the question – “What is your marketing plan?”
Here’s the problem – not many people have a clearly, defined marketing plan. Not all marketing plans are the same. Why? Because not every business is the same and therefore not everyone’s needs are the same. For example, one business’ marketing plan may be to raise brand name awareness, another might be to increase leads and sales online, another might be to retain customers etc.
Can you see how each of these goals will determine a different plan?
Can you see how far we have now strayed from the whole concept of social media? We’ve gone right back to basics and we’re talking about goals!
The point is that social media is a small part of your overall marketing plan.
As you can see from the video, there are other elements to your marketing plan. All of these elements are equally important and they all play a vital part in achieveing your overall objective (whatever that might be).
It is irresponsible for people to recommend that you totally rely on social media for your business. There is no ‘one fixes all’ solution to business. You need to have many things working together in harmony. Here’s just some of the things you need:
- website
- customer service (offline and online)
- SEO
- email marketing
- networking
- cold calling
Each of these categories are huge in themselves. This is why it is irresponsible to rely on social media (or any other of these categories).
Hi, I’m Haroon Rashid and I’m the author of this blog and the founder of Finisher Creative. If you are a small business or a charity/non-profit I would be more than happy to talk to you about your online marketing and social media needs. If you’re in the Yorkshire area (UK) I’ll even take you out for a coffee! You can email me on info@finishercreative.com, check me out on Facebook, follow me @FinisherCre8ive or Google+ I look forward to hearing from you!
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[...] Marketing means that you consider the bigger picture. You can’t rely on social media alone. You can’t rely on SEO alone etc. It simply does not [...]