What if my business sucks at social media?

A lot of businesses are caught up in the frenzy of social media.  They are desperately trying to stay on top of the myriad of  platforms - scrambling to create a very visible online presence.  I often hear small business owners saying that they are feeling overwhelmed by it all.  Another frequent response is that they have created the websites, the facebook pages and twitter accounts, but that they fail to attract customers.

My advice is to relax.  Social media is very important and will only continue to grow in importance, but you have to put it into perspective:  social media is just a tool to reach your target audience.  It certainly is not the end of the road if you need more time to master this tool.  You have an arsenal of other tools you should utilize in the mean time.

Just to refresh your memory, I am writing a short series of blog updates on the more traditional tools. 

Promotional Mix

The promotional mix consists of 7 aspects namely personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, corporate image and exhibitions.  Each of these aspects allows the business to connect with its target audience, to communicate key attributes and to build long term relationships.

The most fundamental need of a business is to create sufficient sales. You need to inform customers about the attributes of your product and motivate them to purchase it.  Sales promotions offer a direct inducement to customers, salespeople and resellers to purchase a product.  It is extremely flexible and functions at both the consumer and trade levels, thereby creating high levels of distribution and goodwill.

However, there are also some disadvantages to sales promotions.  When implemented incorrectly it can damage the brand equity.  Care should also be taken to coordinate various messages across all the formats utilized.  When used too frequently it becomes the consumer expectation rather than a temporary sales boost.

Tomorrow's update will discuss specific techniques to inform customers about your product and how to motivate them to buy it.

Key components of the communication process

I am a firm believer in creating strong foundations - whether you are building a house, a business empire or an marketing campaign.  The very basis of creating a successful marketing campaign is to understand the communication process.  Communication in any business defines the relationship with the customers.

Key elements of the communication process

The source or sender

The source or the sender is the person or organisation that distributes information.  For marketing purposes it is better to convey information via a person as consumers relate better to individuals than faceless corporations.

The source needs to be credible.  The consumer will internalise the marketing message and make it part of his/her own belief system if they perceive the source to be reliable.  The attractiveness of the source will have a bearing on the likeliness of the receiver to identify with the message.  In other words, if the consumer find the message familiar or likeable, he/she is more likely to identify with the message. 

Receiver

Where marketing is concerned the receiver is referred to as the audience.  It is crucial that the marketer identifies the target audience in great detail.  The better your understanding of the demographic, geographic and psycho-graphic aspects defining your target audience, the more effective your marketing strategies will be.

Message

The message is any information you want to convey to your target audience.  It can range from awareness about the brand or product, in depth information about product attributes to images promoting positive associations with the product.  What is important to remember is that research indicate information presented first and last are remembered better than those in the middle.

Encoding

Encoding refers to the translation process of putting ideas and messages into symbolic form.

Decoding

This process occurs when the receiver tries to interpret the message.  Marketers know that the message might be decoded differently by different people.  This is due to the fact that the sender and the receiver are likely to have different fields of experience.

Feedback

Feedback is the part of a receiver's response that is communicated back to the sender.  It occurs in the form of purchases, inquiries, complaints, questions, store visits, website hits, etc.  Feedback assists the marketer in determining why a campaign fail or succeed.

Noise

Noise is anything that distorts a message or distracts the sender.



                       Image:  www.pixmule.com