Do you Twitter, Digg or Stumbleupon to get business?

Much has been written about social media, conversational marketing, buzz marketing, and shared networks. There are some real advantages in understanding this media and how it can be utilised to help you get your name out there and more business. But how does it compare to direct and e-marketing ?

What is Social Media?

Social media websites enable sharing - Youtube for video; FlickR for photos; Blogger for blogs; Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace for friends; Digg, Stumbleupon for recommendations; Yelp for reviews; ... the list goes on with hundreds of sites.

Many support fan-bases, friend circles, or other viral marketing tools that become distribution channels for your marketing messages.

Over one billion people access the Internet daily. More time is spent on social media websites than email, search, and other Internet uses combined.

It's hot!

What Businesses Want?

What's the relevancy of social media? How do we integrate social media with business?

Any business wants reach, brand recognition, and mindshare that generates more orders. If you can reach 100,000 customers, and have a recognized product or service - then, each time you reach the customer with a message, they are more likely to respond. These orders can be online or offline through retail.

Reach, recognition, and mindshare lead to results. It's simple.

Traditional Marketing

Traditionally, businesses gather addresses or email addresses and send ; or pay for flyers, coupons, or ads through publishers who have the mailing addresses. These have been high cost, high friction activities.

• A stamp costs .36p and is rising. Total mailing budgets cost £2.00 plus and rising.
• Effectiveness of direct mail is declining. Few open unsolicited mail.
• eMail collection and management is high friction, high decay, and dropping in effectiveness.
• Users are reluctant to register and give you an email address. Registration is high friction.
• eMail addresses decay 20% per year. An unmanaged list decays to uselessness in two years.
• Spam blockers prevent bulk mailings - most bulk email don't arrive.
• eMail formatting is limited and complex. No flash, video, or interactive component.
• Few people read the email - deleting without reading.

Not surprisingly, return on investment (ROI) on a direct mail campaign has dropped.

Social Media - the Low Friction Approach

Effective use of social media replaces the list building, message sending, and mindshare maintenance functions. A blog is your media archive - with multi-media postings and an RSS subscription mechanism. Your presence at social networks like Youtube, Facebook, or LinkedIn are like magazine racks at popular cafes to reach fans, friends, and interested parties.

• Readers discover you or your products by friending or subscribing. Compared to registration or supplying an email address - these actions reduce the friction to join to clicks - no typing, easy decisions, less commitment.
• Lists are decentralized. Each member maintains their own current address. The connections - whether a friend or a subscription - are maintained automatically. The list stays fresh.
• The lists scale - to millions. With addresses, the cost to mail a million is prohibitive - not scalable. With emails, blocking of bulk mail stops scalability. (ed: Obama leveraged his ad budget with social media to impact 4 million voters per month.)

Like traditional media, the likelihood that a member would see/read a social message is low.

However, social media compensates with:

• Scale. Your lists sum to millions of connections.
• Frequency. You can publish 1, 2, ... 10 messages a day - thus increasing the chance that a fan would see your message.
• Format. The message can be video, interactive, musical, or otherwise capture the attention of a fan.
  

Although the creative costs can be the same as traditional marketing, the distribution cost is zero. This means you can send more messages, test messages, and actively manage the message flow with very small investments.

With lower investment and higher returns, social media improves ROI. Most importantly, the solution scales from a few customers to millions.

Conclusion

What is social media? It's an efficient replacement for direct mail marketing.
Every business needs to learn and experiment

See you on twitter,

Champagne ideas on beer money

According to the market research, businesses that invest in marketing during a recession typically see a return on investment of more than 4 per cent in the short term, as well as gaining market share three times faster in the two years following a recession.

Fortunately, effective marketing doesn’t have to break the bank - if it’s done creatively. The following are just some of the ways growing businesses can make the most of the tough times ahead by smart use of direct marketing.

Refresh your marketing materials

Revamping brochures, pamphlets and flyers can be done cheaply in-house using Desktop Publishing software or even Microsoft Word to create professional looking documents that can be printed locally. Even photos can be purchased, royalty free, from sites such as www.istockphoto.com

Ensure your website is up-to-date

• As more and more people move online, it’s vital you don’t get left behind and miss out on their custom. Ensure the content of your website is relevant and up-to-date and all your latest customers and news is posted regularly. Silly things like contact details, email addresses, phone numbers and links are current.
  
• If your website is out of date and does not change neither your customers nor the search engines will visit it. Include a blog or something that can be easily updated with useful information and details for your customers.
  
• Sign up for all the free “relevant” online directories – get your website listed and out there – even Linkedin, or Facebook can add traffic to your site.
  
• Utilise the free Web Optimisation tools that Google now has available or attend a good website workshop that will tell you how to design a good website that the search engines will be able to easily optimise.

Email effectively

Email marketing is an affordable method of reaching out to potential customers and can be targeted very effectively, with the added benefits that recipients can respond immediately. You can send out emails to various mail groups using your in-house address book or database. Another, larger scale and perhaps more efficient option is using an outside email marketing company to assist – but whichever you choose, ensure you are able to measure the emails’ effect on sales.

As an example – I worked with a client before Christmas to send out 4500 emails – 450 of them were opened and 90 of them clicked on the link with 14 looking at his website for more details. After following up the people that were interested he now has already secured one piece of business with another two in the pipeline totalling £30,000 – not bad for an afternoons work.

Press the flesh

• You are always the best ambassador for your business – networking is a proven method of meeting new people and increasing business. Research your local groups and go along for a visit and make sure you make some meaningful contacts whilst you are there.
  
• Dust of your little black book of contacts – friends, family, suppliers, people on Linkedin and see what they are doing and who they may know that could either help you with your business or refer you on.

This year will be hard, but companies who invest wisely in selected marketing initiatives will bolster their position and enable them to emerge surer, stronger and brighter from the economic gloom ahead.

Remember – if you don’t ask you don’t get.

Good Luck