Social Media and Digital Advertising Brings Your Customers Home
There has never been a time when you can reach customers and potential customers more easily than today. Gone are the days where blanket paper directory marketing or flyers through letter boxes were the only affordable ways to reaching customers. Businesses regularly spent large amounts of money playing the numbers game. Maybe if, 5,000 people saw the advert that might lead to 100 sales.
If you were a local food shop that type of blanket strategy might have returned OK results at best. But what about the Zumba trainer who leaflets 2,000 homes only to find out that 30% of the homes have owners over the age of 60? If the Zumba Trainer could just target the people who were more likely to attend her classes, then the return on the money she was spending on advertising would be far higher. The great news is that through Social Media and Digital Advertising she can. The rise of Social and Digital Advertising means you can achieve far more and with far less cost.
What’s the catch with Social Media and Digital Advertising then?
Effective use of Social Media and Digital Advertising to reach customers really works. There is no great catch. There are no hidden costs or pitfalls if planned correctly. Advertising now is all about making sure ads are appropriate, interesting and delivered at the right time.
Facebook limit the number of adverts to appear in a personal timeline. The advert will look natural within that timeline. The content will be relevant to the person. Content within the advert will be delivered in a way that will evoke a response from the reader. It would be easy to think the company with the biggest budget would secure the limited ad space. That isn’t the case.
Let’s say the reader is a 22 years old, male, works as a plumber and likes pages such as McDonalds, KFC etc. If he eats lots of takeaways then his local take away business would be able to secure the ad space at less cost than say The Ivy, restaurant in London. It’s no longer about how much money you have it’s about how relevant you are. It’s about how to reach customers, who are your customers. The ad he sees might only appear on his timeline in the evenings, right at the time he is most likely to buy. You choose who your ad is shown to, what ad is shown and when. Make it relevant, interesting or informative, timely and a little money can go a long way.
It’s understanding that lets you reach customers
To enable you to reach customers you simply need to know who your typical customer is. You probably have a gut feeling about who your average customer is. Information such as age, gender, location are all the types of information you need to think about. The fastest and most reliable way to really start defining your customer is to turn to any data you have already via social media. Facebook Insights can help you determine profiles across Facebook and Instagram. Most social platforms and of course google have data analytics available to help you. Use them.
Knowing who your customers are is key to building your online business presence irrespective of whether you are simply making use of all the free ways of promoting your business or paying for advertising.