Getting Social With Media

YOU NEED A BOOST! Your current marketing plan is working….Kinda! We can’t deny that social media like, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn to name a few have caused us to communicate differently.  Just look around, everyone from your Tween to your Grandmother is on some social media site and interacting with you on a much more regular basis than the postal service.  A good friend of JAX Designs was saying just the other day that he is having a hard time deciding where to place his marketing and advertising dollars based on all the constant messaging. It’s not easy, but it can be effective choosing the right social media and then working a plan to achieve the company’s goals.  Social Marketing is not about throwing messages everywhere and hoping.  It’s about having the right person execute the message and then building on that message in a non-intrusive way. Being helpful and offering great information will increase your company’s bottom line.

In the following article we will give you a couple ideas on how to position your content using social media to get the biggest punch from it…

BLAH BLAH BLAH…

If your readers can say that, over your content then you shouldn’t bother exposing them to it.  There is nothing worse than spending the 20 seconds of precious time while the boss isn’t looking on uneventful and boring information.  When a company exposes its subscribers to non-current and run of the mill information like a weather report or sports stats, it’s really giving the impression it has nothing going on in the marketplace. The content doesn’t always have to be related to your products and services directly. Often a great question can be posed that is relevant to your company and will draw your readers and potential subscribes to your company website, blog, tweets or fanpage.

Always include a link back to your site or an example picture or video so that it can be easily copied and pasted and shared.  This is how your company becomes viral and alive on the internet.  Your webpage will get better placement on Google and Yahoo and other popular search engines because you have more buzz and higher credit within the Social Media Algorithms.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT…

With so many services and companies offering social media integration and search engine optimization, your company is guaranteed to be lost in their shuffle. At its core, social media is a grass roots campaigning tool.  A President of the United States was elected using Facebook and Twitter to interact with a youth and disenfranchised movement.  By leveraging social media, the message looked as though he was speaking one on one to his subscribers. You can easily send a thank you message or respond to your audience on a regular basis and show that you are interested in them with your targeted messaging. We recommend having a Social Media Expert like JAX Designs; manage all of your social media. This will enhance your message across all of the different platforms making the message adaptable to the way that each social media targets its subscribers.  Tweets are very different from Facebook posts but the message can still come across the same way…from a human and interesting!

Always integrate your content. If you have a Facebook account and a Blog, make sure you post your information in both places and then get a Twitter account so that you can let others with like-minded interests know to come view your information and then strategically, like or share it in other social media sites. There are many other ways to get your content to the marketplace once you have the essential social media sites working for your company.

SHARE WORTHY CONTENT…

Readers are curious about new ideas and information. You will often notice that beyond the article there will be a comment section and users post the word “First”. This shows to all other readers that they got to the information before anyone else and are more likely to then redistribute it. Your products or services might not be that interesting but if you have a social media savvy programmer, they can relate your products to something else that is interesting and current.  If all you sell is brown work boots, but there is a new picture floating on the internet showing those boots helped with rescuing Tornado victims or trapped miners, you can use this information to make your boots relevant and interesting by posting that picture link along with the current information.  Tell your subscribers to recommend you and offer a deal or incentive for any referrals.

Word of mouth marketing is probably the best thing that can happen to your company.  It puts the word out to potential clients, “I have used this product and or service and am satisfied”. Often clients are on the fence about using your company and to hear that someone else has and even recommends it, can tip them over to your products and services.

Finally, if you are just getting started, keep in mind that your subscribers are not. Potential clients using social media sites are bombarded with marketing messages, so make sure your message is current and useful. In today’s fast paced and ever changing marketplace it is important to leverage a tool like social media to capture the market where your current marketing plan is not. You can develop a quality campaign on your own or you can contact JAX at http://www.JAXDzign.com/contact.html, check out our group on Facebook or send an email and we would be happy to create a perfect campaign for you!

SURVEY SAYS...

In today’s fast paced and quickly changing business environment the key to thriving is QUALITY customer service. Companies face tough competition from rising stars as well as existing players with newer innovations. Client satisfaction has quickly become the deciding factor in whether your company will maintain its share and growth in the marketplace. Successful companies quantify their position in the market by conducting customer satisfaction analysis through the use of tools like surveys. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the area of the company that utilizes this tool most. This helps keep the existing client base happy and increase the retention and recommendation rate within the target market.

Companies like yours conduct surveys to discover answers to a variety of questions. These questions are diverse, and vary widely depending on the plan and the desired results from the survey. Below are four essential reasons for businesses to quantify customer data in conducting a survey:

What's Going On With Your Client Base

Surveys are a non-threatening way for your business organization to learn about what motivates your client base and then what's important to them when utilizing your products and services.

Opportunity To Discuss Key Areas Of Interest

Having an open discussion with your client base is often difficult so being able to communicate with respondents about your strategic survey topics allow for a better insight into the questions your survey is setting out to answer. The feedback will also allow you to ask even deeper more probing questions at a later date that can shed light on topics related to your questions within a larger context.

Create A Plan Of Action To Address The Important Issues

Some business owners often rely on intuition and feelings about a target market or trends in the marketplace. Through the utilization of survey data, a business can gather objective information to make sound data-driven decisions. This is the best way then to immediately address issues that are important, rather than wasting time and resources on irrelevant concerns.

Set A Company Benchmark

Conducting a survey provides a quick look or snapshot of your target market and their attitudes about the information your survey is trying to gather. This helps a business establish a baseline to compare the target market attitudes and perceptions relative to the survey questions and establish whether these trends in information are getting better or worse over time.

An effective customer satisfaction survey should focus on measuring the client base’s view of how well the company delivers on their needs. The most common factors include ideas like service promptness, staff responsiveness, and understanding of the customer's problem in general.  A business owner can then take this data and learn from it. Here are a few compelling reasons to incorporate customer satisfaction surveys into your current business plan:

•Enhance profits.

•Increase market share.

•Increase repeat business.

•Improve quality of service.

•Gain insight on products or services.

•Improve customer satisfaction and retention.

•Provide a way for unsatisfied customers to vent.

•Measure and compensate the entire organization.

•Demonstrate commitment to listening to customers.

•Learn where the company stands in the market against the competitors.

Your business and customers have a wealth of information and insight about what it is like to be a customer of your company. Many of your customers also buy from your competitors. They know what can be done to improve your company's products and services, customer service, communications and other criteria important to achieving total customer satisfaction and loyalty.

While most companies are aware of the need to take action and make improvements to become more competitive, they often miss the hidden opportunities that can really make a difference for customers. That's where JAX Designs customer surveys come into play. We can help you uncover the hidden data you need to compete more effectively gathering the information and insight you need to keep existing customers and attract new ones as well.

By creating and effective survey and administering it we have uncovered that in general it will costs 5 to 10 times more to attract new customers than it costs to keep existing customers. That is a telling statement! Most of your customers won't complain directly to you or your staff but they will definitely complain to friends and business associates. They may remain loyal as a customer, but buy less of your products and services. The worst thing that can happen though is that they become customers of your competitors. Uncover the facts and perceptions of your products and services and your clients can be the greatest piece of your marketing plan; recommending your company, products and services to your immediate market and then through social media, like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn…the world!!

Your target market and your clients will behave, act, purchase and recommend based on their business experiences, what they hear, how they feel and what they believe about your business, your products, your staff and your service. JAX Designs takes the time to understand YOUR business, YOUR products and services, the psychology of the sale as well as the underlying factors that drive customer satisfaction and behavior. You can develop a quality survey on your own or you can contact JAX at http://www.JAXDzign.com/contact.html, check out our group on Facebook or send an email and we would be happy to create a perfect survey tool for you!