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Social Media Maturity

This month we’re exploring social media – it continues to evolve, new players are emerging and we see many of our entrepreneurs still not sure how to maximize their return on (time) investment for their businesses. In this edition of Marketing At Work, we will explore a little deeper what goes into a strategy, share some resources from around the web, and we’ll close with a special offer for those of you still on the social fence.

What is a social media strategy and why do I want one?

Social Media continues to be a challenging aspect for small business owners. Those that have adopted it but who are still in the trial stage are probably seeing time devoted to social media marketing without clear results. Those that have strategies, processes and metrics monitoring ARE seeing ROI, and that’s an expected outcome from Social Media Marketing today. If you’re in the trial or transition stages, developing a comprehensive social media strategy will assist in this progress to social media maturity.

What goes into a Social strategy? Like all good marketing strategy processes, we develop SMM strategies that align with current marketing strategy. We look at markets, messaging, content and calls to action – we are looking at each market and asking “what do they need? What do we want them to do?”

Companies who are operating at full social media maturity will be tracking ROI - and the method for tracking varies depending upon the client’s business model. A service or expertise business (such as Tria) will measure ROI by the number of signups to our e-mail newsletter, or the number of inquries and downloads of whitepapers and case studies from our web site that lead to a meeting and project engagement with a client. A client who has an online store will measure this by tracking the customer across their site and into their e-commerce store, knowing which posts yielded the most purchase activities and what dollar amount those posts represented. A client with a brick-and-click model or a brick and mortar store may use unique coupon codes for each offer and track these with their point of sale system, again, measuring what dollar amount those posts represented. With modern web site code tools, it’s easy to track all of these activities.

With our social strategies, we take into consideration content uniqueness of each client – some clients will want to develop video-based content (professional or on-the-fly depends on the audience), others will want to have information content (whitepapers, documents) still others will offer photograph-based content and many will offer all three. A content-development strategy is a key part of all of our social media strategies. Content is king – it is what keeps clients returning to your site, and in turn your ‘store’ – whether that be on line or in person. Converting content use by prospective clients to sales of goods and services is the goal of all marketing activities.

Here are a few resources on social media strategy and social media marketing maturity that will be helpful.

Article from MarketingSherpa

Get going on social media strategy:

Our DesignJuice Social Media strategy packages begin at $50 per month for 12 months. This includes our social strategy development, training and follow up meeting to answer questions about implementation. You will emerge with:

• a comprehensive social strategy,
• with week-by-week tactics AND
• skills to implement it in your business.

If you can’t manage the day-to-day (and many clients find this difficult both from a time and marketing message crafting standpoint) our monthly social marketing management packages begin at $125 a month.

I’ll suggest for some of you this is a LOT less than whatever you’re paying for those Yellow Pages ads or coupon books, and your social strategy will work harder for you than any of these vehicles will, in a digitally connected world.

Give me a call. Let’s talk about how we can put social media marketing to work for your business! 517-886-9708

Your Marketing Department

How to have a top-notch marketing department without investing in a marketing department!

Small businesses – particularly here in Lansing – run lean. Hiring someone specifically to do marketing is a luxury small companies can’t usually afford – let alone someone with twenty years of marketing and branding expertise, or cutting edge social media marketing skills.

That’s where we come in! Consider Tria Marketing your marketing department. For our entrepreneurs, we can package up a very affordable monthly program of marketing activities based on your budget. Have just a small budget? No problem – for the monthly cost of one yellow pages ad that is probably no longer working for you, you can have our team’s expertise working on your marketing. For a bigger investment, you can have many of the marketing tools that your bigger competitors are using!

How many of these are you currently using to reach your customers? What could you be doing regularly if you had someone to do it?

[graphic design]

Posters, advertisements, brochures and corporate literature
Logo, signage, vinyl graphics and trade show exhibits

[web design]

Web site design, e-commerce site design

[digital marketing]

Search engine optimization – getting ranked high in Google
Social media marketing strategy and management
Blogging
e-mail newsletters

[marketing]

Strategic plans, tactical plans, week-by-week marketing plans
Market research, new product innovation strategies
Voice-of-the-customer research

[sales]

Prospect list development
Professional social networking consulting
Sales followup and sales support
Marketing works when it’s done consistently and effectively.

Give Ann a call today at 886-9708 to talk about putting our team to work for you as your marketing department!