Social Media Increases Product Sales & Brand Awareness

The beautiful thing about using social media for your business is that it’s less expensive than traditional advertising avenues like billboards, radio spots or print magazine ads. And, there’s a way to track impressions and the click-throughs rates to your website, which allows you to understand how those results translate into return on investment.

Professional service providers: here are our top three tips for using social media in order to grow your business:

Hire a Skilled Social Media Manager, If Possible

Even if you’re a small consulting firm, hiring a skilled social media manager to oversee your social media channels is crucial. There is a stigma that the field of social media is centered on creating content and simply posting it.

But, there are actually a lot of creative and technical moving parts behind the scenes. And, when you’re busy focusing on business, you need someone on your team that has the skills to write creative marketing content, research, engage with brand advocates (followers who like your product or service so much they’re eager to tell others about it), and then analyze content – differentiating between what’s working and what isn’t.

If hiring a social media manager isn’t in your budget, hire an intern. Many colleges and universities offer social media/social media marketing programs. The first class of students to go through these programs will most likely be graduating around the end of this year. Tapping these new graduates will be cost effective, as well.

brandengagementIdentify and Engage Brand Advocates and Industry Influencers

Whether you are able to hire a social media manager or not, understanding social media lingo and techniques will help you navigate this marketing field.

Turning a regular client into an active, engaged brand advocate is a low-cost, high ROI social media strategy. Marketing is a two-way street now; so don’t be afraid to reach out to people on social media who you think would benefit from service. And, if you live in the same area, treat them to coffee and start building a relationship with them.

Also, consider having a blogger review your service. The cost of your service is probably cheaper than direct advertisement. This strategy also encourages more engagement than traditional advertising. This is a great example of utilizing marketing’s two-way street.

Optimize Your Company’s LinkedIn Profiles

Every business advisor at your consulting company should have a solid LinkedIn profile. Discover the possibilities of fostering B2B relationships and finding potential clients with LinkedIn. This social media tool could be your first impression to potential clients, so this is your one chance to set the stage and introduce yourself to your best prospects and connectors.

Viewers of profile want to know what’s in it for them and this is your chance to have a conversation with your audience – the best LinkedIn profiles accomplish this.

LinkedIn isn’t your digital resume – it’s where you brand yourself!

Here’s a checklist of what your LinkedIn profile should include:

  • a professional headshot
  • a striking headline that has keywords in it, so when people search for your profession or skills – there you are!
  • a customized URL
  • A summary including a bio about yourself in third person that uses relevant keywords, your qualifications, what you do, why or how you’re good at what you do (differentiate yourself!), your company’s tagline,  and its mission.
  • Control the skills that are your profile

Use Social Media Ads

Facebook was founded in 2004. It took them eight years to start advertising. Now, every social media channel offers the opportunity for businesses to advertise. It’s officially one of the fastest growing sectors of online advertising.

Pinterest recently rolled out their promoted pin option for companies and according to a Business News Daily article, “Promoted pins work well for a whole range of brands, both in and out of Pinterest’s core categories. Everything from financial services to food and even auto companies saw good results.” engagment

But, before you start a social media advertising campaign, think about what you want to market and how that can help you reach your business goals. Do you want to increase product sales or raise brand awareness?

Once you know which goal you want to achieve, you can start writing your copy or produce a video to use as an advertisement. Keep in mind that advertising cost varies from channel to channel. You can spend as little as $5/day on Facebook advertising, while LinkedIn’s daily minimum advertising budget is $10.

And, you will run into this term, if you haven’t already:
CPC.” This term stands for Cost Per Click. This is the price you are willing to pay for every click on your advertisement. There is usually a minimum cost per click that you can assign to your campaign. For instance, LinkedIn requires a minimum $2 CPC.

A few more tips: Native Facebook ads (the ones that appear in news feeds) offer audience targeting and analytics to measure your campaign’s progress. Make sure you take advantage of these. Also, rotate your ads frequently. The key here is to have fresh ad content!

These are just three techniques you can use to help increase sales or brand awareness for your business. Our list of tips only touches the surface, so we encourage you to research all the tools and resources out there that can help you write fresh, creative content, schedule content and stay up-to-date on the newest social media apps!