Using Social Media as a strategy to Re-Invent

The saturation and decline stages of a product life cycle are a nightmare for any entrepreneur. Anything that can be done to re-invent the product and take it back to the stages where sales are growing and keep it at the maturity stage for a longer period, would be a dream come true. The advent of Social Media Marketing, makes this a reality. How? A Social Media Marketing Strategy worth its salt should enable dialogue between the organization and its clients. In all the data exchanged, our strategy should incorporate applications and tools that will aid data analysis which is intelligent enough to help us identify opportunities. This data when analysed appropriately, will arm the business with vital information on product use, product need, distribution channels new markets and possible joint ventures. It will be cardinal also to align our advertising efforts with the information unearthed from this data analysis.

One of the initiators of dialogue is Content Marketing. Through this marketing method you want to share relevant and valuable information about your product. The information has got to be targeted to a specific audience with a deliberate intent to attract dialogue. It is key to note that the targeted audience is already searching for information out there, and our aim is to conveniently avail ourselves as the providers of that information. Embedded in our information dissemination strategy, is a call for the consumer of our information not only to purchase our product but share this information. The availability of various platforms as sources of information through the internet has left almost everyone with a zeal to research. Most consumer will only purchase products that they have adequate information about, providing us the opportunity to share this information. The cyberspace is infiltrated with a lot of 'experts' and some are of questionable repute. There is no better advantage you can have than present yourself as an authority in your trade by sharing product information and professional advice.

Another dialogue instigator is Inbound Marketing. This is a strategy where you want to showcase how you perform internal activities and use that to attract clients. With Inbound Marketing you are literally saying to your target audience....."Hey, this is who we are, this is what we do, this is how we do it....do you fancy?" Since Social Media is designed to propel dialogue, who ever has been targeted with this information is going to respond. They will either confirm that what you are doing tickles them the right way, they might scream at how shoddily you are conducting yourself or they might give indications of how you fair compared to the best within your industry. That you have bared your soul is in itself some form of an evaluation and the responses you get will arm you with a with relevant information on how to keep your product offer high on the performance rung.

Research and development can be very tricky as it is premised on a lot of assumptions. Where sampling is conducted there is no guarantee that the results are harvested from the appropriate potential markets or the results will survive the changes in our fast paced age. With Social Media Marketing, research can easily be conducted through engaging our followers who are our target markets. Not only will the research be a fair representation but our strike rate will be very close to assumptions. When we develop a listening skill, it is possible to pick out from clients new product use or even product diversification. Our clients will provide us with relevant information to purse new markets. It is through dialogue in Social Media Forums that we can as well identify potential strategic partners. Our Social Media Marketing Strategy is as good as our investment on data analysis. With adequate analysis, we can re-invent ourselves from market saturation and product decline, to growth stages either with a new product or with our current product in new markets. It is also possible to identify new product use.

Is your Social Media Marketing Strategy able to re-invent you? We could help you with an evaluation.

How Social Media Disrupts Conventional Business Processes

Social Media is here to stay. Not only will it stay but it is going to disrupt a number of business models. Some of the disruption will be advantageous to some business models whilst others will be negatively affected. Like any change, the introduction of Social Media into the mainstream business processes has got both threats and opportunities. For bold entrepreneurs with an innovative appetite, this presents enormous opportunity for product improvement, penetrating new markets and affirming a competitive edge. Below are five points that detail how Social Media disrupts conventional business models. Each one presents opportunities that cut across most if not all industries.

1. Social Media removes barriers that exists between businesses and their customers. Content Marketing provides organizations an opportunity to showcase products in detail. It is through the understanding of the product; the acceptance of the solution provided by the product, that influences a purchase. Inbound Marketing bares open the soul of the organization. The organization has to demonstrate its internal processes as a way of attracting clients. The main goal is to have prospecting clients engage. The organization should exude a persona that prospecting clients can identify and are comfortable to converse with. Whilst organizations rarely seek a response from their advertisements and marketing efforts, with Social Media Marketing, unless the audience/target market engages, one would have not achieved their objective. Marketing as we know it, is disrupted by Social Media

2. Social Media streamlines internal and external business communication. With Social Media communication can be on real time. Individual business units can communicate with clients. It is possible for line workers to be authorized to communicate directly with clients. Let me hasten to say that we ought to support our Social Media Strategy with communication policies that clarify what can be communicated and what can not be communicated. Traditionally we have Public Relations, After Sales Care and Client Relations handling how we interact with clients. Social Media Forums streamlines these departments and leave clients dealing with the organization directly. This empowers both the clients and organizations. The client is free to converse, ask all questions and even contribute their views or make suggestions. This environment strengthens the relationship between clients and their suppliers. When clients are happy with the service they receive, they share company information with their friends becoming brand ambassadors.

3. Another disruption that comes with Social Media Forums is the opportunity for entrepreneurs to incorporate co-creation. Clients' ideas can be co-opted into the design and manufacture of products. The norm has always been that if you come up with an idea, once perfected you patent it and go through a phase of trial and error where you test your market. With Social Media, it is possible to involve prospecting clients in product design and manufacture. By the time the product hits the markets, the customers are not presumed, they are known by name and location. Co-creation reduces the cost of research and development. Research remains cardinal, but it is done in a smart way which involves prospecting clients and reduces costs.

4. Social Media does not only affect Business to Consumer activities even Business to Business processes are disrupted. System developers are making use of participatory design, to involve clients in the design of systems. Social Media Forums make it possible for this engagement to happen without physical presence of all parties involved. System upgrades and maintenance is also made possible through easy communication facilitated by Social Media Forums

5. Social Media avails enormous data to organizations about their clients. This data is a game changer that does not necessarily bring any disruption to conventional business processes. However it avails information on client behavior, client preferences and client needs. Shrewd innovators have invested heavily in Data Analysis. Data Science is enabling organization to mine information from data availed by Social Media Forums. This information if properly analysed can improve services and be utilized to explore new projects.

Besides marketing, how else have you used Social Media Forums to improve your business offering?

Follower categories and their impact on your Social Media Marketing Strategy

One of the marketing objectives in Social Media Forums is to get followers to engage. There are different rungs at which you will engage with followers. There are some whose engagement will end by merely following you. Whilst this is the lowest category in the engagement rung, it holds some value in that these followers could be migrated to a better category. Following this group are those that will just like your posts without commenting. This groups goes a step beyond just following, they view what you share, and they like. This could indicate some improvement from the first group but again this action does not mean much to justify our investment. This reaction is still not what we are looking for, but this group belongs to an important sector of our target market. They have paid some attention to our activities.

Next to this group are those that will make inquiries or ask questions about our products. This is a critical group because the way we respond could literally convert them to sales. This group actually brings us to another important point in our Social Media Strategy, we might need different individuals engaging with our followers. For technical inquiries, we need the most technical brains showcasing our technical expertise. Remember that internet has equipped our market with information and when they engage us, they are actually knowledgeable to some extent. For engagement on a situation that bares the possibility of sales conversion, we need our sales expert to harvest this potential.  We also have another group of followers who will go through our content and give us negative feedback. Some will criticize everything about our work and run short of calling us names. This is valuable engagement. It is valuable in that, if we analyse what they criticize us on, we might actually land ourselves on a competitive edge. Criticism from a competitor, could mean just a feat of jealous; whereas criticism from a potential client will always point to room for improvement.

Those that have done business with us migrate to another group that raves about us. This group needs to be given its own type of attention because they become brand ambassadors and will push our interests through word of mouth marketing. This is the group that will share our content. They will also recommend us to anyone within their social circles. The more followers we have in this group, the less paid advertising we will need. It is therefore cardinal to convert the larger part of our followers into this group. Our strategy should help us identify these important engagement rungs from our followers and migrate them to the most important group; those that rave about us. Our engagement with this group is more valuable than a company profile that details our past experiences. For most small business operators, our potential B2B clients will always request a company profile before giving us any business. The profile details our trading history. Our engagement, especially with clients that we converted to sales, is more valuable in profiling our business than historic events, that may have been left redundant by the paced changes in our environments. Ou

Our followers do not only authenticate us to their peers but can also be part of our profile for B2B clients. Have you ever used Social Media Activities to profile your business, we would love to hear your valuable comments below....