If we just use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media fora to broadcast our own message, we are only using one-half of its potential. The difference between digital marketing now and previous marketing approaches such as broadcast and print media is that our audience can respond directly and immediately by communicating back to us. And they can do more than simply give us a thumbs up or a share.
Irish business news website Fora.ie recently reported on how a robotics company in Mayo got the chance to develop a prototype of an innovative purse designed to deter impulse spending for an American personal finance company. Although Cormac Robotics mostly put on robotics camps for young people over the summer, a Twitter acquaintance of co-founder and director Niall McCormick knew a woman on Twitter who was looking for someone to develop this prototype and put the two in touch. The result is a whole new avenue of opportunity opening up for Cormac Robotics. Good thing they weren’t too busy to pay attention to Twitter!
Monitoring social media and cultivating relationships with helpful people in your target market and your general field does take time. A lot of time. But it can pay off. While the huge leap ahead in a company’s development and focus seen by Cormac Robotics is unusual, social media has a big role to play in fine-tuning products and services. Why would you put serious resources into developing and marketing a product that is almost what people want when you have a great way to learn more about exactly what they want?
Most of us understand that watching our social media analytics gives us insight into our audience and that this is critical for learning how to best reach them. We work on fine-tuning our marketing strategies based on when they see our posts and how they react. But what about using that same platform to fine-tune our products and services? If you’re selling phone covers in black, silver and red, you can tell which of those colours are most popular by looking at how they sell, but that does not tell you how many people aren’t buying because they really want a blue cover. With social media, they can tell us directly if we make it clear we are listening.
We can even take it a step further and ask them what they want.
No time to market your website? Talk to Matrix!
By Irene Hislop
By Jeff Sheridan
By Matrix Internet