In the last couple of weeks of our no blogging clue escapade, we discussed the idea of product research and how new product development has become easier than ever thanks to customers being more expressive of their views on Social Media and review websites.
We’ve covered a large range of marketing jargon however I’m sure that some concerns may have arisen from our previous posts. ‘Surely trying all this out will scale up the marketing costs?’, ‘We don’t have the budget for this’ and so today to ease those worries, we’ve decided to give you a blogging clue about reducing marketing costs.
Wikipedia defines marketing spending as ‘an organisation’s total expenditure on marketing activities’ which is as straightforward as definitions come.
More traditional marketing and market research activities are famous for being extremely expensive and unreliable. With the lack of definitive evidence as to whether a product will be successful as well as how accurate market research is, it’s in fact very difficult to lower costs without sacrificing in terms of feedback, analysis and reach. However there is a reason why this approach is dated and its name is Social Media.
One of the biggest advantages to existing and new businesses in the social media movement is that it is free. That’s right, there are various activities business of all types and sizes should be including into their marketing activities that cost little more than time and effort. To get you started here’s a few Effective Marketing recommend you get started on with little or no monitory investment or outsourcing needed.
- Take ownership of your social spaces. If you haven’t already done so, make sure you secure your company name for all the major social networks. Do this before someone else does. You don’t necessarily need to be active in these accounts to take ownership of them.
- Use social media to monitor your brand and competitors. Social media has become the place where people share their experiences of companies both good and bad with their peers. If you want to know how people feel about your brand and the work you do, monitoring your brand and your competitors brands in major social networks is fundamental when it comes to understanding online sentiment. A useful tool to do this is Hootsuite, information on Hootsuite can be found on our site
- Monitor industry relevant words. Not only should you be monitoring your own brand and competitors brands but using tools like Hootsuite also gives you the opportunity to monitor industry relevant keywords and phrases across major social networks. If your prospective clients are talking about your products or services then you’ll get to hear about it first.
- Be a thought leader within your market. Curating, retweeting, reposting and having an opinion on industry relevant content is an easy and productive way to start building a relevant audience and get your brand noticed across the internet. Think about industry relevant websites which could create opportunities for guest posting of informative or issue based content increasing your brands footprint and visibility online.
- Ask for feedback. Many opinions exist online and especially on social media networks. If you need to know something about your industry, your customers, your products or ideas, don’t be afraid to ask. Feedback from social media users has been used to create some of the most successful businesses and products today. The beauty of gathering feedback from internet users is the potential to target specific demographics, interests and ages whom just couldn’t be reached through more traditional methods of business or product analysis.
The internet and social media is awash with audiences relevant to your products and services. So if you are not monitoring how you are perceived by current customers and how they feel about your current services and offerings then now’s the time to start.
If Business Link are to be believed, it is 17 times easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to find and sell to a new customer. The question is it more cost effective to develop a new product to meet the needs of your existing customers than it is to find and sell and existing product to a new customer?
Yes, there can be additional costs for advertising or using tools to better your functionality but as a premise Social Media costs nothing at all to use and gives you a direct link to your customers and potential clients.
If you’ve found this post interesting and think you could be more proactive with your internal marketing activities, we’ve got some fantastic courses available to gain the knowledge, confidence and processes you need to get started and taking control of your marketing potential and costs. Find out more about the Effective Marketing training here.
We hope this post has helped to clear the issue of reducing marketing costs using social media. If you have any other questions about the topic feel free to ask us in the comments and we’ll be sure to answer them through responses or through upcoming no blogging clue posts.
Come back next week if you haven’t got a blogging clue about trusted brands
