The questions surrounding how to apply and what to say when using Social Media Marketing are growing exponentially. Many would see this as a signal of failure for people to understand in general the whole concept of community participation, branding and Internet sales. However, I see it as a very strong indication of how the new phenomena of social marketing is gathering its well-deserved attention.
It has been recorded in history that any major change in society and/or business may take as long as 7-10 years to fully be understood and mature. Over 50% of the US population continued to ride horses for an estimated 15 years after the first car was deemed road worthy — not to mention the fact that the roads weren’t fully modernized for over 30 years.
Social Media Marketing has only been in real world existence for roughly 1-2 years and we are already experiencing a tidal wave of small business interest.
The idea of having a real-time method to brand your business and at the same time promote a special event or product launch is not an easy concept to mentally digest. We are all accustomed to traditional means of separating sales from marketing and marketing from advertising.
A branding or marketing campaign will take at least 3 months to get any meaningful data right? Wrong! The Internet allows a business the opportunity to bundle Sales, Marketing and Advertising in a cohesive fashion. This cohesion tremendously advances the time element of the campaign and permits almost real-time feedback. The best advantage is the low cost of entry into the marketplace.
The single biggest issue, for this new way of marketing and advertising, going forward is trying to tear down the linear thinking process involved with traditional marketing. Thinking outside the box will provide the small business owner the opportunity to vastly broaden their scope of potential customer base. Instead of thinking of directly targeting people who ride bicycles, if you sell bicycles, a business owner might begin a social media campaign centered on low impact ways of exercising or maybe even how to get to work without spending money on gas.
The real advantages with using Social Media Marketing aren’t found with identifying one target market and hammering on it until its dead. The answer is to apply both horizontal and vertical approaches to marketing penetration and use the information gained to further advance the growth of your business.
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