customer insight

All posts tagged customer insight

Are your Goals ‘SMART’ Enough for Social Media Success?

by Joanne Dolezal on 5th October 2018

You need to have SMART goals for your social media if you don’t want to be a ‘busy fool’. It is an excellent digital communication channel but requires time, creativity and some financial investment.

So, what is the real purpose of your social media activity?

This ties in with your marketing goals and what you want social media to achieve for you. This could be lead generation, customer service, raising brand awareness or telling people about a new product or service.

Set your goals for social media with the following questions in mind, or apply them to the one you’ve already got:

Who exactly do you want to like or follow your page?

Customers, peers, influencers, suppliers, competitors? Even if they don’t Like your profile, they can still follow you and see your updates. If this is a concern, you’ll need to keep an eye on your followers and either block them, set up Private Twitter accounts or develop key messages for each audience.

Which social media profile/s should you prioritise?

You may have the time, team and appetite to be ‘everywhere’ so try to modify your posts and schedule to reach target customers when they are in the right ‘zone’. Deciding upon the Right Place is individual to your organisation – you will know where you get the warmest welcome and it’s okay to be choosy. Have branded profiles on all the platforms if you wish, but focus your time and energy on the two or three that really make a difference.

What content would they find valuable?

What content will my target market engage with? Research, observe and listen. It’s okay to be passive for a while. Take as long as you want, because there’s no hurry. What’s key, is developing the Right Message. Social media is going to be there for a long time and isn’t going to run away without you!

Do you need a content calendar?

Developing one is really useful, even if it’s a simple one created in Excel.

Many businesses will have ‘seasons’ of key dates and events and having a calendar makes sure you are ready and you are prepared to talk about the right things at the right time.

How often will you post?

Although you don’t need to post dozens of times a day, it does need to be done regularly and consistently. If you have big bursts of activity and then nobody hears from you for months, people will gradually lose interest.

Don’t leave social media to the last minute.

It’s a really valuable communications tool so include it in your campaign plans. Develop your messages alongside the rest of your campaigns and schedule them in advance. Then go and make that cuppa!

You need a plan, because planning prevents poor performance.

Your Customers Set the Tone…

When you know the tone and language of your target market (informal, hip, corporate, industry jargon?) it’s easier to join the conversation, to fit in. If you’ve spent some time following what they post and engage with online you’ll learn the topics they talk about regularly. You’ll gauge what they most care about.

Once you know the questions they ask and know you have the answers that could help them, start experimenting. Post regularly and see what gets a reaction.

SMART Goals are ‘Realistic’ too.

Be realistic about what social media can do for you. The volume is at the top (likes and follows) but it’ll be a much smaller number of people who’ll move through the funnel to subscribe and buy from you.

This is how sales and marketing have always been and always will be, so don’t worry.

Build social media into your regular marketing and it will help to attract, convert and engage customers.

Is your social media reaching target customers at the right time?

Not everybody wants what we do and what we make, or even if they do, they may not want it right now. That doesn’t mean they’re not interested, it just means that it’s not the right time for them.

Once you have realistic goals, you’ll enjoy using social media a lot more, because it can be a lot of fun. You can meet and chat with people you wouldn’t have come into contact with ordinarily.

Social media allows you to take the first steps in developing relationships that could last for years.

We hope you enjoy the The Three Rs of Social Media Success.

Why not check out the other blogs in the series:

If you like video, check out our recording of this fascinating topic and learn from these amazing thoughtleaders.

Our new online programme Content Marketing Conquered is designed with you in mind. Based on our successful workshop programme and latest strategies, we guide you to the top in 6 easy steps.

For more Content Marketing tips and tricks, grab your free eBook here.

Photo by Rawpixel on Unsplash

Build Your Social Media Following versus Buying Reach and Followers

by Joanne Dolezal on 28th September 2018

It’s never a bad time to look at how you attract people to your social media profiles and build your social media following.

There are two sides to the audience building argument.

One side will tell you to focus on quality, build your following slowly based on quality of connections and a real affinity.

The other side will tell you to focus on quantity, building your following quickly with paid social media campaigns, buying likes and followers and creating sensational content to ‘go viral’.

You will know what works for your organisation…

You will need to gauge what feels right, how much time and money you want to spend on achieving the ‘numbers’ – how many page likes you have on Facebook page, followers on Twitter or your Linked In company page. You may prefer to focus on building your audience slowly and look at the ‘quality’ metrics: engagement – comments, retweets, shares – instead.

But you should know that these options exist, i.e. through paid advertising or ‘likes’ campaigns, if only to analyse others’ social media following more dispassionately.

Remember, though, that anyone promising you instant success is trying to sell you something…

You want to go for quality and build your following ‘organically’

It is still possible to build your audience on social media through content marketing and organic growth, by regularly posting a variety of content that is relevant and appealing to your target audience (or customers). Bear in mind that what you post on social media will depend on what type of business you run. There are many different types of content for business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) companies, and most of it will be familiar to you.

The diagram below charts the most common formats for content marketing.

The best content is user-focussed, non-selling, informative and engaging.

Content marketing uses many different formats to deliver quality content.

Think ‘person to person’, not ‘business to business’.

What you’ll find, even when you are selling to another business person (as opposed to a consumer) is that it’s ‘B2B’ for the first five minutes only. It soon becomes you speaking to another person, another human being, and seeing them as an individual. Everyone in business knows that this is what relationships are based on, and you’ll be on first name terms within the hour.

On the B2C side, with consumer marketing, the people who follow brands on social media want to be rewarded in some way. They want offers, deals and coupons or to know when the ‘flash sale’ is going to be. There’s very little brand loyalty these days, so think about different types of content which could be appropriate for your audience.

This quote is about Twitter, but I like it because it’s relevant to any social media platform:

“…humanize it.” Talk like a human, treat your readers like a human and empathise -this is how you get people’s attention and start to build trust with them. Be real!

Pam Moore

You want to go for quantity and grow your following quickly

All the major social media platforms have launched advertising tools in the last few years. These are not to be underestimated, either in terms of their targeting capabilities or the potential reach they offer you, regardless of geography. If you are familiar with the principles of display advertising (picture or video adverts) and pay-per-click (PPC) you will understand the advertising tools immediately.

For successful content marketing, you need to build your inbound marketing funnel.

The Inbound Marketing Funnel

For those who are new to paying to reach new ‘customers’, both operate on an auction model.

With paid ads, the most exposure (impressions or reach) goes to the highest bidder for that target audience. It’s a fair system, in as far as you know either how much (the maximum) you are prepared to bid for either a click (through to your website or product page) or impressions, the number of people the ad will be presented to (sold per mille/’000).

When you are buying ad campaigns on each platform, you’ll be asked to choose your goals, based on the stage in the inbound funnel (see at right) / customer journey you want to reach your customer at.

Basically, you will be looking for Awareness, Consideration or Conversion.

Paid ads can help you reach target customers beyond your networks, sector, industry, location or language.

Some ads will present your picture ad, others may have a few lines of copy and Call to Action. The success rate on all social platforms is low: typically the click-through-rate (CTR) will be lower that 0.5% or the people you are targeting. You then have to follow up in some way to convert them.

Targeting can be based on the common characteristics of you target customer (or buyer personas) or you can create ‘look-alike’ target audiences based on the custom tools within the platform. For more information about the paid ad tools on each platform, please see our blogs about each platform.

Buying followers can be done in a couple of ways.

The first option is to respond to a direct approach, normally on social media, offering to sell you followers. These are normally sold per thousand. Buy followers at your peril. They won’t engage with your content (posts) and may distort your page analytics (metrics) significantly.

Accessing a pre-existing ‘community’ that has been pre-built by an agency can produce an impressive number of page (and post) likes. Some will have millions of members who are, evidently, very obedient and do as they are asked. This is a tactic if you need to demonstrate interest in your brand or products, perhaps to an investor, but it is not cheap. Or particularly sustainable.

Am I against ‘paid’ social media? No. I think the targeting and advertising tools have the potential to put you in front of people you’d never reach otherwise. I think the best combination is paid + organic, still delivering as much quality content as you can to your social media following.

But I would avoid buying followers, in the same way that I’d avoid buying contact data. It is poor quality and unlikely to convert.

Whether you want to build a social media audience that delivers ‘quantity’ or ‘quality’, we recommend you:

1. Identify your target market – you may already have some information, but the more you know about who you’re trying to target, the better the social media platforms will support you. They have targeting tools built within them based upon the data they gather from users, and in the paid versions these are really sophisticated.

2. Know what they’re looking for – once you start to interact with them you’ll know what questions they ask and also what kinds of things they interact with. Taking time to understand what your target customers care about helps you talk about topics they are interested in.

3. Attract and engage them – by being interesting, engaging and relevant, you’ll start to attract people to your profiles and pages. Use the language they understand and use themselves and your posts will be relevant to them.

4. Build trust and earn leads – doing so will encourage people to visit your website, subscribe to your mailing list and download the lead magnet you’ve created in exchange for an email address. They WILL ring you or send you a direct message, because it happens all the time.

5. Measure and improve. Think about what you’re going to measure, because big numbers don’t always mean anything. The quality of interactions is what matters for a social media following who will ultimately buy from you, or recommend you to others.

Social media is great for weak links, so don’t feel too disheartened when things don’t go your own way immediately and don’t expect too much of people. After all, you’re not face-to-face, so you can’t rely on non-verbal cues or the opportunity to have a proper conversation to build rapport.

At the bottom of the inbound funnel, once somebody has become a customer, it’s a great way to keep in touch with them.

Turn them into an advocate and they will make sure your posts, comments and shares ‘move’.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the The Three Rs of Social Media Success.

Why not check out the other blogs in the series:

If you like video, check out our recording of this fascinating topic and learn from these amazing thoughtleaders.

Our new online programme Content Marketing Conquered is designed with you in mind. Based on our successful workshop programme and latest strategies, we guide you to the top in 6 easy steps.

For more Content Marketing tips and tricks, grab your free eBook here.

Photo by Fleur Treurniet on Unsplash

Get the Right Message and Get Their Attention

by Joanne Dolezal on 20th July 2018

The modern consumer is egocentric, and truly only cares about themself.

They care about what they are trying to achieve and what matters most to them.

So naturally, they skim (ruthlessly) over content in their social media feeds that aren’t of interest to them.

Unless you get the right message you will not get their attention.

This means that your content and posts need to be tailored to them. Just them.

They need to be interesting, engaging and relevant. To them.

If it’s about you, your customers really aren’t that interested. Unless it’s about them.

Zig Ziglar famously said:

“people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care”

Particularly, how much you care about them.

If you can reach out to people with your content and demonstrate that you have something that will change their lives, then you will get their attention.

Listen with your eyes

You need to post and share content that’s relevant to their lives, so how do you find out what that is? Enter, ‘social listening’.

I highly recommend watching and listening (observing) your customers on social media, whether you’re just starting out or moving to the next level. Be passive and see what people are talking about, sharing and interacting with. If you don’t you can often get it wrong.

Develop buyer personas

When you are ready to move beyond the broader categories that people fall into (segments) and start thinking about what is influencing their decision making, you may want to develop your buyer personas. Our recent blog on buyer personas explored the different ingredients that go to make up a buyer persona, but if you take the time and really drill down into who they are and what makes them tick, creating content for them will come as naturally as speaking with an old friend.

Get inside your customers head

Who is your customer and what do they want? Perhaps they’re trying to overcome a challenge or tackle an issue that they’re dealing with. Or it could be something positive, such as an aspiration or desire.

If you appeal to their current mindset, rather than giving a lot of information about your products, services and staff, you will get their attention more easily. Concentrate on solutions to their challenges, ways to reach their ambitions and try to anticipate their questions. If you can give them the answers, you will be helping them to come to a decision. And demonstrating your expertise and trustworthiness.

And get inside your customers heart

When you start talking about someone’s problems, their fears, hopes and aspirations, in a way that shows respect, empathy and understanding, you get their attention.

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

Henry Ford (quoted in Dale Carnegie)

This is your opportunity to show the human side of your brand – social media is a great place for us to demonstrate our ‘personality’ – and make a personal connection.

What’s really interesting, is that even B2B purchase decisions will be influenced by how the customer feels. It is not just a rational decision, so think about how they feel right at the moment. Can you appeal to their emotions?

What is the Right Message?

We’re still selling something. Good sales people know that you’ve won the sale when the answer to all your questions is: YES. You’ve exhausted their objections, allayed their fears, gained their trust and confidence, then finally, their business.

It’s whatever you say, that makes them want to say ‘ yes’.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the The Three Rs of Social Media Success.

Why not check out the other blogs in the series:

The Three ‘Rs’ of Social Media Success
Know the Right Place for Social Media Success
How do You Know the Right Time for Your Customers on Social Media
Get the Right Message: Get their Attention
Build Your Social Media Following versus Buying Reach and Followers
Are your Goals ‘SMART’ Enough for Social Media Success?
‘Mobile First’, Live Streaming & How to Succeed with Social Media Marketing

If you like video, check out our recording of this fascinating topic and learn from these amazing thoughtleaders.

Our new online programme Content Marketing Conquered is designed with you in mind. Based on our successful workshop programme and latest strategies, we guide you to the top in 6 easy steps.

Don’t leave without grabbing your free eBook.

Photo by Adam Jang on Unsplash

How do You Know the Right Time for Your Customers on Social Media

How You Will Know the Right Time for Your Customers on Social Media

by Joanne Dolezal on 13th July 2018

For your customers, time may be a movable feast. Showing up at the ‘right time’ is therefore the ultimate challenge. So how do you know the right time for your customers on social media?

There are always 24 hours in every day, 7 days in a week…

But the bottom line is, for your customer, time may feel like it’s in short supply. This will be more noticeable at different times of day, days of the week or whether they’re just about to take some time off and want to clear out their inbox.

Your goal is to post social media that reaches them

at the right time or day of the week, for them.

A quick look at your social media analytics will tell you when your followers are actively on that platform.

Facebook Analytics Posts even gives you a visual of when your connections were on Facebook each day. So as long as you are active on Facebook, or scheduling important messages for those key times, you will show up at the right time for them.

Work pressures and other life priorities are a big factor too.

Sometimes your LinkedIn update might have just popped up at the wrong moment and they didn’t have time to respond to it. This doesn’t mean that people don’t care, or are not interested, you’ve just caught them when they’ve got other things going on that are more urgent for them.

If you look at the analytics for your social media accounts and also look back through your feeds to see the time of day or day of the week you get the most engagement, you will start to build a picture of your followers. It really is different for each person/business, but as a rule of thumb, if you’re B2C (business to consumer) you should try scheduling posts to go out early morning, in the evening and at weekends, as these are good times to reach your audience.

If you’re B2B (business to business) early mornings, lunch time, and early evening are good times to reach your followers, as these are common times for people to dip into social around working hours. Weekends can work surprisingly well too and LinkedIn is a busy place even on a Sunday evening.

Remember, not every workplace tolerates social media activity on site or in working hours. Even B2B posts may not reach your audience until they ‘clock off’ and head home.

Your customer may have a short little attention span

Sadly, you may find that your lovingly crafted social media posts are competing with lots of other things happening in their lives. They may be dealing with their kids/pets/partners or have the laptop and the TV on at the same time, whilst having a quick dip into Snapchat or Facebook.

Multi-screening customers mean you have a third or a quarter of their attention at best, which is a lot of competition for your social media. Don’t just post once. Share the same posts at regular intervals throughout the day or week to ensure that they don’t your followers don’t miss them and potentially, miss out.

http://www.netimperative.com/2015/05/rise-of-media-multi-taskers-the-battle-for-consumers-attention-spans/

And your customer is mobile too

Location is important: where are people consuming your content?

The chances are that if they’re reading it on a mobile phone, they’re on the move (or having a quick ‘social snack’). They may be travelling or waiting for someone, checking out your restaurant or pub on Tripadvisor en route, or looking to see if an item is in stock en route to your shop.

Whatever they’re looking for, they will want to do it quickly and make a decision now. How well does your social media support these kinds of searches? Photos, maps, videos, quotes, testimonials, product reviews, links – social media platforms support just about any kind of content you need to help your customer find and choose you.

Smartphone screens are still quite small so make graphics and text overlay REALLY BIG so it can be read easily on a small screen. With imperfect eyesight!

Get ready to take your customer on a journey

There’s another dimension to time as well, which is thinking about the right time in that customer’s journey. Using the Inbound Funnel below as a guide, then typically if they’re at the early stages they’re just beginning to perceive a need or want. Content and posts that will intrigue and attract them and get them to visit your website are important.

Later on in your customer’s journey, as they progress, they’ll need deeper content, such as a video to show how to do something or how something is used.

An ebook, guide, whitepaper, email series, etc that offers them more information will garner their email address.

Later still, they may welcome a webinar or Facebook Live, which gives you an opportunity to expand on the topic and answer their questions.

The further they go along that journey, the more they need. Your posts in social media need to help customers to make the best choices and decisions for them, which is a key strength of content marketing.

Plan posts and schedule ahead if you want to reach them at the right time

The best way to plan is to use some simple tools.

Everybody uses a spreadsheet, and you don’t need anything more complicated than that, because it needs to be flexible and easy to update.

There are also a number of scheduling tools, and Hootsuite and Buffer are particularly good when you’re just getting started. As you develop you may want something more sophisticated, but only if you are doing a serious amount of social media on a variety of topics.

Scheduling platforms have different price points and strengths. As you progress, MeetEdgar is mid-priced and very good at scheduled, yet randomised posting but it doesn’t give detailed analytics. Sprout Social is slightly more expensive but gives you a lot of analytics, particularly around #hashtags.

Choose what’s most appropriate for your business stage, size and goals.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the The Three Rs of Social Media Success.

Why not check out the other blogs in the series:

If you like video, check out our recording of this fascinating topic and learn from these amazing thoughtleaders.

Our new online programme Content Marketing Conquered is designed with you in mind. Based on our successful workshop programme and latest strategies, we guide you to the top in 6 easy steps.

Ready to take the next step? Download your free Content marketing eBook today.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Know the Right Place for Social Media Success

by Joanne Dolezal on 6th July 2018

How do you decide which social media platform to use? Why not let your customers lead the way. If you want to know the ‘right place’ on social media, here are three questions to ask yourselves:

Where are your customers actively using Social Media?

Pick 5 – 10 customers at random and see where they have social media profiles.

2. What do they do on each platform?

Post? Share? Comment? Follow? Like?

3. Are you a welcome guest… or a gatecrasher?

Not all brands have universal appeal and sometimes you’re just in the wrong place.

Know when you’re invited and when you’re barging in.

One of our Digital Marketing Institute Diploma (at nesma) students told us a great story. He is the IT manager for a big campus university in the heart of England. They were having difficulty engaging students attention on Facebook, yet were persevering with their plans to keep students up to date on the platform. One of their quarterly student surveys flagged up a key piece of feedback:

Yes, students were on Facebook and Twitter. But Facebook was where they went to hang out with their friends, organise their social lives and laugh at celebs. They didn’t want the university butting in on their ‘party time’.

They were perfectly happy to hear from them on Twitter, though.

Needless to say, said university doesn’t waste time and energy on Facebook updates to students any more: Twitter now works a dream.

Being in the Right Place…

With a little effort, you can become one your customers trusted sources in time. Respect their preferences and you’ll be the welcome guest.

Don’t turn up empty-handed. Instead show up regularly with useful, relevant, timely (and where appropriate, entertaining) content.

Here is an overview of the ‘main’ social media platforms that most businesses would be looking at in the early stages:

Linked In

The most commonly used ‘business to business’ social media platform. You can have a personal profile, rather like an online CV, and a company profile page, like a mini website.

Linked In has been going since 2003, is well trusted and established, with over 500 million users worldwide. It is great for connecting with business contacts, colleagues and networking connections and has groups and forums galore.

The paid accounts have added functionality and allow you to connect with people outside your immediate circles, so it can be a great business development tool too. The search function supports Boolean Logic, so you can literally find ‘an needle in a haystack’.

Posts on Linked In are nearly three times more trusted than on other social media platforms.

The new style Linked In company pages enable you to have something akin to a mini-website, great for promoting your brand and for search engine optimisation for your website – Linked In performs extremely well in online search.

There is also a paid advertising feature as well as sponsored InMail. So if you’re target customers are “white collar” workers, from junior management level up, you are likely to find them here.

Facebook

With over 2 billion accounts worldwide, Facebook has achieved critical mass with users and brands alike. Even if you are not active here, you will want to have a presence, but manage your expectations!

Increasingly Facebook acts as the ‘plumbing’ for a host of other online platforms and tools, including other social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram. You will be given the option to log in via Facebook.

You can have a personal profile or a range of ‘professional’ profiles, depending on your status and requirements and it is still the most effective way to reconnect with old friends online.

It is particularly effective in the retail or ‘business to consumer’ sector, with very sophisticated and cost-effective targeting tools for paid promotions to existing connections and new target groups.

Is your brand “conversational”? If people naturally talk about what you do, Facebook may be your invitation to the party.

For ‘business to business’ it can work well for some service providers, as well as bloggers, coaches and trainers. However, Facebook only presents your status updates to connections (Likes), and only a small % will now see them unless you pay to boost them to reach all your page followers. As well as personal and business pages, you can set up groups and many communities live within Facebook.

Twitter

Twitter is part news feed, part social media platform with over 300 million users worldwide. It is especially popular with journalists, bloggers and media folks for breaking and sharing news stories and opinions. The character limit favours brevity and clarity, but you can attach images and short videos to tweets. The advertising tools allow you to promote your twitter account to encourage followers or your tweets, to increase engagement.

Whatever your industry, profession, interest or niche, #hashtag search will help you find and connect with your kind of people.

Twitter is informal, so it is a great place to interact, share and promote your ideas and news in real time with few barriers and minimal cost. It is as common for ‘business 2 business’ as ‘business 2 consumer’ brands to be active on twitter and many are opting to use Twitter to support their customer service function.

YouTube

YouTube is the original online video sharing social media platform and since its launch in 2003 has become, reputedly, the second most widely used search engine after Google, (by whom it was purchased in 2006). It hosts a mind-boggling quantity and variety of video (and film) on any topic you can imagine.

It is extremely popular and closely linked to Google (who own it), so can help to drive traffic to your website if you have useful and/or relevant footage on YouTube. You can have your own branded channel – an entry page branded to represent your company – and populate it with your own and curated videos.

YouTube is busy, but don’t expect more than Likes and Shares. It takes a lot to get comments from your viewers so don’t expect interaction.

YouTube can be a great place to host ‘how to’ and trust building content for those at the early stages in your sales pipeline.

Instagram

Bought by Facebook in 2012, Instagram is one of the newest platforms but has a growing user base – currently 700 million and rising. It has been a runaway success, benefiting hugely from Facebook’s support and many new developments, including ‘InstaStories’ are designed to compete with newcomers, like SnapChat.

It works really well for tangible or visual brands (and celebrities) and for certain types of business it’s a clear choice, based on sector, target audience and location.

On Instagram, people take and share photos and short videos, typically on a smartphone, which they then upload directly to Instagram with a bit of text. And a lot of #hashtags!

It’s harder for brands to publish into Instagram, as it doesn’t tolerate most social media scheduling software, like Hootsuite, Buffer, MeetEdgar, etc, but this may make it popular with a certain kind of user – it rewards spontaneity.

So what is the ‘Right Place’ for you on Social Media?

If you are happy to be led by your customers, you will save so much time, effort and disappointment spent hanging out with the wrong crowd.

You may need to step outside your comfort zone and start using social media platforms that are new to you. If you’re uncertain, take some time to ‘listen’ – observe your customers and the people they are happy to interact with and see what works for them.

The acid test: can you be true to yourself and still be welcomed in to the conversation?

If you can, then you’re in the Right Place, will build connections effortlessly and will gradually learn about the next of the Three Rs of Social Media Success.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the The Three Rs of Social Media Success.

Why not check out the other blogs in the series:

The Three ‘Rs’ of Social Media Success
Know the Right Place for Social Media Success
How You Will Know the Right Time for Your Customers on Social Media
Get the Right Message: Get their Attention
Build Your Social Media Following versus Buyer Reach and Followers
Are your Goals ‘SMART’ Enough for Social Media Success?
‘Mobile First’, Live Streaming & How to Succeed with Social Media Marketing

If you like video, check out our recording of this fascinating topic and learn from these amazing thoughtleaders.

Our new online programme Content Marketing Conquered is designed with you in mind. Based on our successful workshop programme and latest strategies, we guide you to the top in 6 easy steps.