Tag: Relationship Marketing

How to Amplify Your Relationship Marketing

Thanks to social media and online marketing, we’re all acutely aware of the importance of online branding. There are some great tools out there for small businesses to build a brand that spreads virally across the Internet. But most brands are missing something important: a focus on relationship marketing.

Lead generation is a strategy that focuses on getting new customers, using techniques like email, cold calls, and ads to attract new clients. Relationship marketing works differently. It focuses on building existing relationships between you and your clients so they will come back to you and evolve into brand advocates.

Changing the Focus

Instead of wasting money on print ads and TV commercials, you should focus more on relationship marketing strategies. Relationship marketing means maintaining long-term relationships with your customers so they feel comfortable buying from you over and over again. When done right, it’s a lot cheaper than traditional forms of advertising, and it’s also much more effective because real people are talking about you without having to pay them to do so.

Relationship marketing is all about building trust. No matter what kind of product or service you provide, if your customers can’t trust that they’re getting a high quality product or service at a fair price, they won’t buy from you. So it’s important to build a reputation for quality and value in the marketplace. Once you change the focus from leads and sales, to building relationships – you’ll find that your business not only retains more customers and leads to more referrals, but you’ll find the additional satisfaction that comes with building a loyal fan base as well.

Be Active, Not Passive

The key to relationship marketing is creating connections and making people feel special. When you connect with people on a personal level and help them solve their problems, they will naturally want to do business with you again. This doesn’t happen when you focus all of your energy on completing projects. You have to be intentional about building and nurturing relationships for this to work.

There are a lot of ways to build relationships with your customers. In some cases, it might be as simple as thanking them for their business or offering them suggestions based on their preferences. The point is that you need a strategy for reaching out, staying in touch, and following up with your clients and customers.

Collaboration Over Competition

In our society, we’ve gotten accustomed to competing with each other. We’re encouraged to believe that we have to be better than everyone else in order to succeed. But this mindset can end up costing you in the long run because you may find yourself feeling isolated, stressed out, and overwhelmed.

The truth is that collaboration is a much more effective strategy for marketing your business. In fact, the human brain is hardwired for cooperation. We are social creatures who thrive on connection rather than competition.

Build relationships with the vendors, companies, trade shows, and competitors in your industry. You won’t regret knowing these people when you need them and they’ll all know who to refer when someone needs what you do!

Build Your Community

Create a community. In an age where everyone has an opinion and millions of people are posting their thoughts online, it can be hard to get attention. Create a place online where people can connect, share ideas and provide valuable information. No matter what business you’re in, chances are there’s an online community of people who interact on the same topic or are interested in the same product or service you offer. If there isn’t one, why not create one? Provide valuable information and people will come.

Relationship marketing leads to higher conversion rates: Studies show that businesses who invest in relationship marketing see much higher conversion rates on their email campaigns, social media posts and other online communication efforts. People are more likely to buy from those they know, like and trust so creating relationships with customers helps convince them of your credibility and reliability. You’ll also be able to create better social media content that resonates with followers and boosts engagement on your posts.

Relationship marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing out there. It will help your business grow, provide you with new leads, and help you make a name for yourself. But it’s not easy to do. If it was, everyone would already be doing it.

The first step is to shift your focus from sales to service. I promise that if you treat your people well, like friends and family, they will be loyal and they will refer you to others. The sales will happen naturally.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

How to Amplify Your Business This Year

My word for 2022 is Amplify.

When you break down this word, it means to increase the volume of something. And, in 2022, I want to increase the volume in both my professional and personal life. I’m ready for more success AND to have more joy and abundance in my life.

Does this sound like a good plan for you as well?

Well, if you want to amplify your business this year – you’ll need to ramp up your marketing.

Amplify Your Online Presence

Did you have a robust online presence? Can a complete stranger interested in your work find enough information about you online? Building out your online presence is all about trust. There are many ways to do this but I always recommend starting with your website.

If your business doesn’t have a website yet, then begin there.

The more information people can find about you online, the more comfortable they become to reach out, connect, and ask questions about what you do.

Here are some other ways to amplify your online business this year:

  • Build your Google My Business (GMB) page and post to it at least once a week.
  • Submit your business information to relevant online directories.
  • Build out your social media profile(s) and post regularly.
  • Pitch what you do to content creators that do interviews with other business others so that you can get on their video show/blog/podcast.
  • Encourage your existing clients to post a great review about you on Facebook, Google, or Yelp.

Be patient. This is a long game. In fact, if you don’t even have a website yet, the search engines may ‘ding you’ for the first few months to make sure you are a legitimate business that plans to stick around before they start showing your website in search results.

Amplify Your Social Media Marketing

Do you have a social media strategy for 2022? If not, it’s time to sort that out as well. Creating a consistent presence on social media is a great way to amplify your business this year. We recommend starting with only one platform. Preferably, one that you will enjoy using and sharing content on.

Once you are consistently posting, it’s time to look at social media advertising to get your content in front of more people who want to see it and engage with it. Social advertising is an affordable way to gain more traction and reach with your social media marketing.

Amplify Your Relationship Marketing

Making connections with other people in your community is the most effective way to amplify your business. Relationship marketing is all about connection, collaboration, and community. Bring your value to the table, get to know others who are sharing their value, and work together to support, lift, inspire, and motivate each other.

Once you start building relationships, as opposed to focusing solely on sales, you’ll notice more word of mouth, more referrals, and more satisfaction in the work you do.

What better way to amplify your business this year than to find a group of people that inspire you to be the best you can be?

Amplify Your Impact

How can your business make an impact in your community this year? If you truly want to amplify your work, consider adding a philanthropic or charitable aspect to your work. Small businesses and community impact go hand in hand! People will be drawn to your mission and vision and will talk about the great work you are doing with others. It’s a win/win/win situation for both you and the people around you.

Join me this year in amplifying our efforts to reach for even more success and impact in 2022! We gather in my Be Awesome in Social Media facebook group to support and encourage each other and collectively increase our impact together.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Using Social Media Marketing to Build Relationships with Your Audience

Many people believe they can make the cash register ring without building a presence on any of the social media platforms. While there are exceptions to every rule, most businesses need to establish an online presence, show up consistently, and post interesting content to attract their audience. 

Maybe you’ve got a website but a website alone is not enough. You have to drive traffic to that website. It’s unlikely that people will just find it on their own.

Perhaps your main focus is in-person networking and word of mouth? These are both important but they scale so slowly and if the world shuts down, so does your connection with your audience.

If you are ready to build your online audience, here’s where to start:

Create a Business Page or Account

You can’t have a social experience with your community without being on social media. Sure, your friends and family will follow you first (on your business page), but if you are trying to build a business and want to run ads or look at numbers, you have to first have a personal account and then create a business page or account.  Then you have to have a strategy to build the audience and you have to stay on top of your analytics to determine what is and is not working.

Do It Right the First Time

Business owners get overwhelmed with setting up a social media account and will often rush through all the steps. Done is better than perfect, right? Well, it’s better to have the business page than not have it – but there is so much potential when it comes to building out your social media account profile. Do it right the first time by building the profile out properly and fully with a robust bio, keywords, and brand messaging.

Creating & Sharing Content

Once your profiles are created, it’s time to experiment with what to share. Develop an effective strategy through posting different types of content (including videos) and tracking what your audience responds to most. Consistency and commitment are important here. Many biz owners start strong and then fizzle out.

Reach More People with Advertising 

Once you have an idea of the days of the week, times of day, platforms, and content that works best for your people – it’s time to invest in a targeted ad strategy. Create a low-dollar offering and experiment with targeted ads and custom audiences to test your results.

This is the path to finding and building your online audience. Once you have an engaged audience, you’ll find that the other parts of running your business begin to sort themselves out.

Is it a struggle each month to create and post social media content for your business? Do you just not have enough time in the day to get it all done? The Social Media Advisor team are experts in helping you stay consistent online! We’ll work with you to create an editorial calendar, messaging, and branded images aligned with your culture and promoting your business so you don’t have to worry about it anymore! Find out more about our Monthly Social Media Support package on our website.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Top 3 Things to Know About Having a Business Page vs a Personal Page in Social Media

When it comes to social media, there’s two main components when it comes to visibility: personal visibility and professional visibility. Anyone with a social media account has some level of personal visibility on social media. While some small businesses use their personal feeds and accounts to market their business, most companies create a separate professional account or feed for their promotional posts. 

We are often asked: is it okay to post business content on our personal pages and do we really need a professional presence for our business on social media?

This is a good question. Here is our best advice.

No One Likes Spam

You are probably connected to a lot of people who have started a small business who use personal accounts to market their businesses products or services and who add you to groups (without notice), and private message you at random about their products wanting you to buy them based on the fact that “they have seen a result and you should buy because you trust them”. This is called spam. And no one likes spam.

Too many small businesses, especially MLM salespeople and network marketers, use their personal feeds to market their products and services. The idea behind this approach is many small businesses have a much bigger following on their personal pages than they do on their business feed (if they’ve set up a business feed at all). Plus, if you are selling for another company, there can be rules against representing yourself as more than just a salesperson for that business. 

While it’s a sound theory, it has some flaws. 

  • People, unless they are also trying to sell you something, don’t become your friend or follower on social media to get spammed by your advertising. This is an instant turn-off causing your followers to not engage with your posts and, therefore, teach the algorithm to not show them any of your content.
  • Just because they know you or are related to you, doesn’t mean that they are your target audience. You could be spending a lot of time and energy advertising to the wrong crowd.
  • Social media users are smart and they can see a salesperson a mile away. If you want to lose social media friends, start treating them like walking wallets.

You Don’t Own Your Audience

Facebook’s Terms of Service state clearly that you aren’t to use your personal profile for business purposes. If enough people report your posts to Facebook, they can shut down your entire account (and there goes your entire audience with it). 

Because you don’t own your audience, at any time, a social media account can change their algorithm, change their rules, or shut down completely – and your entire marketing list vanishes. There are popular social media channels that no longer exist today. 

It’s much better to provide value-added content that your audience enjoys and engages with and then convert those people to a platform you own – like your email marketing list.

At least with a business profile, you know those individuals want to hear what your business has to say and they are more likely to tolerate a few promotional posts or be tempted to join your email list than random folks on your personal feeds. 

What You Should Do Instead

Top 3 things you can do to build your professional social media audience the right way: 

  1. Network with people, actually get to know them and build trust through your relationships and knowing things about their lives. These are warm leads that will be more interested in what you have to offer. 
  2. Don’t add everyone to your FB groups, instead post about your group and ask people to join of they are interested.  You can even private message them, inviting them that way to join (but only ask once).  Give an incentive, offer a fundraiser to host your party or host an event with a collaborative partner to co-host something instead.  (P.S. – a Handwritten note or mailed invite goes a long way and is way better than spamming!)  
  3. Having a business page or profile will actually help you track numbers, sales, and engagement vs tossing spaghetti at a wall on your personal account to see what fits (and losing people you actually care about.)

Is it a struggle each month to create and post social media content for your business? Do you just not have enough time in the day to get it all done? The Social Media Advisor team are experts in helping you stay consistent online! We’ll work with you to create an editorial calendar, messaging, and branded images aligned with your culture and promoting your business so you don’t have to worry about it anymore! Find out more about our Monthly Social Media Support package on our website.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

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