4 Reasons Your Customers Are Better Marketers Than You Are?

Let’s face it fellow small business owners: the amount of information available to your customers today has deemed your traditional marketing efforts completely ineffective. When customers want to buy something they are more likely to talk to their peers or ask opinions on social media before they come to you. With this information shift, we as business owners need to take advantage of the power of the consumer. In today’s world, the consumer can be a better marketer that the marketing staff that you employ 9-5.

Here are 5 things that your customers can do for you that your marketing department can’t.

       

1. Fully Understand Your Buyers Needs

Nobody understands the wants and needs of your customers, like your customers. This may seem obvious, but most business owners today forget to ask for the opinion of their loyal customers. Encouraging customers to give their opinions on your products and service not only provides valuable insight as to what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong, and what they want to see next. Encouraging customers will also help them to understand, just how important their opinions are to the success of your business.

2. Truly Connect With Your Potential Customers

      

       90% Of Customers say buying decisions are influenced by online reviews. This statistic is proof that there is no more important source that the voice of the consumers peers!  Before stepping foot into your business, customers trust their peers to give them a full and unbiased opinion of your products or services.  As much as you try and delight your customers, your marketing and sales department can never connect with them on the same level their peers can.

3. Exponentially Boost Your Social Reputation

When you look at the current state of your businesses’ social media accounts, it is likely that you feel your current efforts are not enough. There is nothing you can do to change your social reputation faster that your customers can. Have your heard of the term trending? Well topics don’t trend because

a business posted a tweet. Topics Trend because of the massive amount of consumer interaction that the CONSUMER generates about the topic. Don’t be shy in encouraging your customers to comment and promote your brand on social media.

4. Help To Penetrate New Markets

Are most of your customers from a certain geographic area, or a certain demographic? If you answered yes and still don’t feel your marketing tactics are working,then it is likely that you are not utilizing the reach of your customers on social media. Your customers and thousands of friends and followers that could potentially be getting your message, most of which are of the same demographic. The best way to get your customers reaching out to their friends and followers, is to create great content. Generate great content that your customers can’t help but share with the world!

Thanks For Reading!

Randy Delling

Social Stride

Checkout Our New Website www.socialstride.org

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What Can MLB Teams Teach Us About Inbound Marketing?

As a baseball fan, it is hard to escape the lure of heading to the ballpark to watch my favorite team! The food at baseball parks are basically like going to a sit-down restaurant, the sing-a-long songs allow any shy person to be a fool in public,  and a family just cannot resist a themed night! For Detroiters, how can a Tigers fan resist Star Wars Night at Comerica Park? Simple: You can't!
Not to mention, compared to any other major league sport, baseball is typically the most affordable, so families and friends can attend multiple games a season.

 As a business owner you can take away and apply the principles that MLB teams are using to your advantage. So what is it that makes the MLB teams use of Inbound Marketing so effective?

Behind The Scenes

With the emergence of social media, fans want to be engaged and get a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of their favorite players. MLB teams in 2015 encourage their players to post updates to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Players and Teams use these social media channels to give fans an inside look into what players are doing on their days off, how they are helping in the community, what goes on in the clubhouse before a game, or how they celebrate after a big win. Using social media to engage make fans feel as if they have a more personal connection with their favorite team and promotes interaction between fans and players that they pay their hard earned money to watch and see. Inbound is the same: engage, engage, engage! 

E-Mail Offers

If you are a fan of baseball, I’m sure that you have already subscribed to your favorite teams email list. MLB teams do not use these email lists to spam their subscribers! Instead, teams use these lists to educate readers on the current state of the team, offer specials on new merchandise, and promote ticket offers that make taking your family to the ballpark more affordable. Teams also use images to portray their message in every email. Nobody likes to read a wordy email with no value other that a link to buy. Consumers what to be educated and entertained when they open an email. MLB teams use email effectively and efficiently.

Content Hub

MLB teams use their website as a content hub that draw fans in for much more that just buying tickets. The main reason fans visit their favorite teams website is to learn about the team. Teams provide highlight videos, player interviews, injury updates, promotional schedules, and blogs. Providing this content insures that the first place that fans look for information is on their website. In turn, these visitors will reward the team by purchasing tickets and merchandise directly from the source, rater that visiting a ticket broker or another sporting goods store.

So how can you apply these tactics to your business?

1.            Use social media, not only to promote your current promotions or specials, but to give your customers a behind-the-scenes look at how your business runs and why you’re the best.
2.         Don’t spam your email subscribers with wordy email that provide no value. Use email as a medium to educate your customers and provide valuable information that make them want to buy from you. Also, just a "Hello" or "Happy Birthday" email is much more memorable than a spam email in the trash bin. 
3.             Make sure that your website is a hub of information that has everything that the customer needs to make a buying decision. You do not want you customers visiting other sources to get information about your products.

Thank you for reading!

Please visit our website for more information on how Inbound can help grow your business!

www.socialstride.org

Randy Delling

Social Stride

Setting Your Business Apart: Social Selling

 Whether you are a seasoned sales professional or are just starting out, it’s easy to see that traditional selling methods are just not working like they once did. My first career out of college was as a life insurance salesman. My mentor with that company’s philosophy was, “open the phone book and start dialing." It did not take me long to find out that I was wasting my time and energy making cold calls. What my mentor failed to realize was that in this day and age of caller id and spam blockers, the time one puts in to sending ghost emails and making cold calls is not an effective use of a salesman’s time. In 2015 access to information about people is easy to get. People now want to work with individuals that they have a connection with and can trust. Most importantly they want you to prove your worth and expertise before they even consider accepting one of your phone calls.

You may have already heard of the concept of social selling, a concept that every sales professional CLAIM they are using. They think  having a vague LinkedIn profile is enough. Then, they’ll wonder why they aren’t getting the leads from social media that they should.

If you want to succeed in this new way of selling you have to put the time in. Just like cold calling, if you only made 10 cold calls in a day you probably won’t net one worthwhile conversation.  Social selling is time consuming, but if done right can net amazing results!

Here are the three steps that make a great social seller in 2015:

1. Promote

When you reach out to a prospective client, the first thing they are going to do is look you up on social media and google to get as much valuable insight as they can into what you offer.  So, have it available!  A clearly defined personal mission statement, a detailed description of what you do, testimonials from clients that you have worked with in the past, gives a better idea of you personality outside of work. Consumers want to work with professionals they can see themselves having a drink with on the weekend.

Promote as if you had to buy from you. Who would you want to work with and what would you want to know about yourself before making a purchase?

2. Educate

Your potential clients want to know what your skills are, and they want you to prove it to them! The best way to do this is to educate them. I believe that this is the most important aspect of the social selling model. I also know, that this is the part of social selling that most professionals skip, and is the reason they are not successful getting business opportunities through social media. There are many ways of educating your customers. Some of my favorites are: blogs, webinars, YouTube videos, e-books, and white papers.  Writing one blog per week or hosting one webinar per week is not time consuming and can make all the difference in your customer’s eyes. Educating your potential clients will give you a leg up over your competitors.

3. Delight

The final step to social selling is delight. Your potential clients want to get a pat on the back every once in a while, so give it to them! If they have a birthday, make sure to send them a message, if they just had a new baby reach out to congratulate! Those are the obvious ones. But if you really want to impress them you have to customize your delightful messages. Once a month, try sending them some information about something that you learned about them on their social media accounts. For example, if the person is a baseball fan. Send them and e-mail and tell them you read an article about baseball and it made you think of them and send them a link. Consumers will appreciate this small gesture more than you think.

Thank You For Reading

Randy Delling

Social Stride