When you see someone taking funny pictures and sharing them with friends on Instagram, Facebook or another social media channel, it does not matter if these pictures are “liked” or “disliked”, if you agree or disagree or if you would do the same. People are different, but they all have the same basic needs.
People need to buy food, furniture, and clothing; people need to be active and they need to have fun. People “need” to practice sports to have fun and you can use these “needs” to your advantage. You can learn about their behavior and offer them their products of choice by implementing an effective Social Media marketing campaign or even a full Digital Marketing strategy.
Beyond observing the behavior of users in Social Media through the various tools available, you can use easily available market statistics to help develop the marketing strategy for your customers. According to a survey conducted by CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority), when it comes to Internet usage, Canadians rank first in the world spending an average of 45 hours per month online.
The survey also show where Canadians are spending their time online and social network sights is number 1 followed by entertainment and portals. Email only comes in fourth position with respect to time spent on the Internet by Canadians according comScore numbers.
Many companies mistakenly focus all of their efforts on attracting new customers, even though it costs 5 to 10 times more to attract a new customer than it does to gain repeat business from an existing one. It is important to put at least an equal amount of effort into keeping a current client happy (and maybe even up-selling the client) as opposed to attracting a new one. A good strategy is using the available research and market studies to compare with your users behavior on social networks. Another way is using Digital Marketing strategies. So, how can you use Digital Marketing strategies to market to existing customers?
The best answer is that it would depend, but I’ll elaborate. I mentioned previously that according to comScore, the highest percentage of time spent on the Internet revolves around Social Networking, but this does not mean that you should spend all your budget and energy building strategies and tactical plans to only improve your digital marketing efforts on social networks only. The goal is to engage and impact your customer consistently and in a fun way and digital marketing is more than just only Social Media marketing. Your customer will seek a variety of things on Google, will play mobile games, and will listen to niche podcasts or music.
Sometimes when you talk about digital marketing or Social Media marketing it is very common to talk about a tactical plan, but it is important to build strategies that are cohesive and always take your ultimate goals and objectives into account.
Another tip is never to use only one major Social Media channel i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or another social network as a unique strategy because if the popularity of any of them ultimately Twitter dies down your strategy will die with it. These are different times. Brands can be made or broken very quickly e.g. MySpace. Your strategy needs to be bigger than using just one Social Media networking channel.
The bottom line is that Canada is a digital leader in the global economy in terms of Internet usage and innovation and there is no doubt that Digital Marketing is the new method of choice to help increase and improve relationships between a business and its customers.
You can view the full research presented in the CIRA Fact book 2013 in the below link: (http://www.cira.ca/factbook/2013/index.html)
Irsiemedia is a digital marketing agency specializing in Online Advertising and Social Media marketing. We are located in Toronto, Ontario and service clients in the GTA, Canada and Globally.
