Assassin Marketing asked:


Social media marketing uses social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to engage with prospects on an ongoing basis. Social media sites encourage discussions, feedback and sharing of information between you and your prospects.

Social media marketing has really sprouted its wings within the last couple of years And its no wonder, YouTube has about 28,000,000 viewers and Facebook has over 100,000,000 users…and over 50% log in daily. That’s why social media marketing is essential to your businesses success.

You’ll see immediate benefits like prospect awareness of your “brand”, you’ll become closer to your customers and find out more about their needs, you’ll build customer loyalty by relationship marketing and social media marketing is cheap but very powerful.

There is several different types of social media marketing, from social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to social bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon and it can easily overwhelm you if you don’t have a strategic social media marketing plan.

One important point before you jump into the social media marketing area. There’s a saying that “When a promoter moves in, the prospects move out”. What that means is that you should not use social media only to promote your business. You should visualize it as a public relation tool and a customer retention system. Nothing drives people away faster than self promotion…so be careful, only use “soft promotions” when using social media sites.

So how does social media help your business? That’s a good question and once again it all comes back to back linking to your business website. When done properly, you’re social media sites will drive prospects back to your business website and create back links. The more back links your site has, the more relevant it is seen by the search engines and therefore the higher rankings you will receive. It will be seen as an authoritative site for your industry, bringing your company more and more customers.

As you can see, social media marketing is a very powerful tool and should have a place in your business’ overall marketing strategy. But be careful, you may find yourself spending too much time “posting” and “tweeting”. You should find a web developer who can integrate many of these social media sites and link them together so when you post content to one, it will automatically post to all of your accounts instantly.



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The Maverick Marketeer asked:

To really learn about direct marketing and how you can use it to better your business you should first understand what direct marketing is.

According to Wikipedia, direct marketing is defined as “a sub discipline of marketing focused to driving purchases that can be attributed to a specific call to action”. This marketing discipline can include and medium that allows you to communicate directly with customers. Some examples of direct marketing include, direct mail, email, newspaper, radio, television, and of course the internet.

The main focus of any direct marketing strategy is to increase the number of customers that respond to your marketing campaign or “response rate” while also trying to decrease the cost of advertising. Increasing customer response to your advertising will accomplish two very important things. One, increase the number of sales leads generated by advertising, and two, further establish business name recognition.

The ability to properly communicate with your business’s target audience is an extremely important factor in your overall business success. As you learn about direct marketing; keep in mind that persistence really does pay.

One of the most important aspects of designing a successful direct marketing campaign is in targeting your audience. Developing a marketing campaign that speaks directly to your potential customer’s wants and needs will mean the difference between creating quality sales leads for your business and utter frustration at a lack of customer responsiveness.

Several important questions to answer when developing any direct marketing campaign are:

* Who..? Who are you targeting with your particular business message? Who are the people who would be most interested in hearing what you have to say?

* Why..? Do you just want people to review a few helpful products..or do you want them to retain your services?

* What…? What specific benefits are you offering through your message?

* When…? Are you looking for a more immediate response from your reader…or are you providing food for thought and building your relationship?

* Last but not least…How? How do you intend to present and distribute your message to your potential customers?

Your study of direct marketing will be an on going process. It’s important to understand what works for you and your business, what doesn’t, and why that is. The key to success will be in continuing to try different strategies and techniques in order to perfect a particular combination of things that work well for you.

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