Social media is a huge marketplace that’s become an important way for companies to communicate and engage with their customers and prospects. A person who “likes” or “tweets” about you is making an endorsement of your company to friends and associates.
Research has proven that an endorsement by someone of trust is more likely to result in a selection of your product or service than a simple advertisement. Here are four simple and effective ways businesses can build an online community that generates sales by combining social media and traditional direct marketing strategies.
Use Socially Targeted Multichannel Lists
Marketers can promote their companies using prospecting lists with identified socially active people from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. By targeting these prospects through postal and email channels and rewarding them for joining their online communities, marketers can receive powerful endorsements from their registered social base. Then, based on firmagraphic, demographic and psychographic intelligence gleaned, refinements can be made using the outcome of these campaigns to choose the right combination of mail, email and telemarketing tactics to generate productive results.
Make Campaigns Resonate with Social Monitoring Software
You can profile your online community by using a social monitoring service to know exactly who’s talking – and not talking – about your product and services, and what’s being said. This service monitors product-related chatter in social groupings. By using this chatter, marketers can influence public opinion to score and craft personalized messages with the positive language customers most closely associate with their companies, and then work that analysis into their direct marketing campaigns to make their messages resonate.
Use Email Append
If you don’t have email addresses, appending them to your postal-only records is a simple process. By sending targeted messages based on your customer’s buying habits to your community, you will generate new business through postings, links, “likes,” follows, and mentions.
Build Your Customer List Through Your Online Community
Encourage your fans and followers to spread the word about your products and services through your online community.
Using traditional direct marketing methods with social media, blogs, and other digital strategies is a direct marketer’s dream come true.
Author: Wayne Roberts
As published in Direct Marketing News Marketing Guide 2012
© Reach Marketing LLC 2012 All Rights Reserved.
