Did you know that;
· 93% of B2B buyers use search engines to begin the buying process
· 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they are ready to buy, they will find you
· B2B people conduct more than 6 searches per day
· 41% of business owners say that Twitter delivers great value to them
· Twitter averages over 86 million status updates per day
· 40% of Facebook users become fans or followers of brands & services
Your prospective customers are using Social Media to find what they want, long before you could possibly know who they might be. They also use Social Media to keep in touch, and to learn what you and your competitors can offer them.
And the world economic situation is not going to change anytime soon. In fact, most economists are predicting that things will get worse before they get better.
So, if you want to grow your business, you can’t have business as usual, because the “usual” isn’t usual anymore.
This brings us to what you need in your marketing strategy. You need to widen your marketing net as much as possible. In order to do that, you need to have effective offline and online strategies.
In my recent videos, I mentioned that there are two offline factors that are integral to any marketing strategy.
1.The easiest place to get more business is from your current customers.
a.You can extend and/or grow the current business you already have.
b.You can go to other departments, within each customer, and help that other department with your products and services.
c.You can offer other products and services from partners that will help your customer grow, and also increase your visibility within that customer.
2.You should be getting referrals all the time from your current customers. There is a formal process for doing this that is much more effective than simply asking ad hoc.
And because of what is happening online (see stats above), as a B2B marketing company, you need an online or Social Media strategy, too. There are two major Social Media categories and six Social Media platforms you need to utilize for your B2B online strategy. These categories and platforms are;
1.Social content and publishing network
a.Your website
b.Blog
c.YouTube
2.Social and professional network
a.Linkedin
b.Twitter
c.Facebook fan page
It is especially important to utilize Social Media now for a number of reasons.
1. As shown above, it is where many of your prospects and customers are searching and learning, for at least a part of each day, and Social Media is how you reach them.
2. You can measure everything you do on these Social Media platforms, and readily test and adjust your strategy and content to ensure maximum exposure.
3. You can make announcements about things like webinars, seminars, trade shows, product launches, etc. on these sites to extend your reach.
4. By sharing content on all of these platforms, you can give your prospects and customers valuable information that will help them solve issues and help them do their jobs better.
5. You can present this information in a variety of ways, like audio, video, webinars, pdf’s, etc. so that each of your visitors can utilize the information in the format they like the best.
6. As well as many more valuable reasons.
So, in order to combat this global economic malaise, you need to utilise every strategy you can. And with Social Media, because it is easy to measure and test, you can quickly see what is working for you, or isn’t working, and then adjust your presentation and format right away.
Contact me through either listing below, and let’s discuss how you can get your online and offline strategies in synch to maximize your marketing efforts to drive more customers to your business.
Kind regards,
Ian Dainty
416.277.4537
ian@b2bbusinesscoach.com
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