Social Media – sucking your advertising budget
Social media has emerged on the internet sucking in millions of visitors and dominating online clicks. For most businesses, advertising on Social media platforms will prove to be a giant waste of time with few customers emerging from websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Why Social Media Advertising doesn’t work!
First, Social media does have its place for certain types of industries such as bars, clubs, maybe hotels or other vacation spots but for a business such as a Plumber or HVAC company. Do you really think someone is going to log into the internet and while they are playing around in their Facebook account search out which plumbers have a Facebook profile and then contact you? That doesn’t happen and if you have analytics running on your website, the data will tell you the same thing.
Second, social media can definitely be used for Brand Awareness and for companies who are selling soft drinks or chips, you will definitely reinforce your brands name by paying for clicks to these websites. However if you are an accountant or auto dealership you can tweet all day long, all month long, all year long for that matter and unless you reveal something shocking to the public, you are probably going to get few followers.
A worthwhile strategy for a car dealer to try on twitter would be tweeting vehicles priced at huge discounts. Again the key to the success of this would be how well you caught the attention of those in the community. Another more proven strategy for the auto dealership is to market to the clicks of people who are actively searching to purchase a vehicle.
Know your Audience – Know where they Surf
The key to a successful advertising via the social media platform is understanding your customers demographics and leveraging the internet to focus only on those customers. Internet marketing is now so sophisticated that you can market to users of a specific gender, age group, zip code, and other demographics and you can target buyers who are actively in the buying process.
Keep in mind that most online marketing companies recommend to every business to advertise on websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tweeter. If you are going to spend even $1 dollar on any form of Internet Marketing, make sure you are tracking the conversions and the traffic sources that generate the most conversions.
