Social media marketing is a powerful marketing technique, but it’s also misunderstood. In its simplest form, social media is a way to connect with old friends from childhood or college and a way to share snippets of your daily life. In its more complex form, social media is a unique way to market your business and products to the entire world in a short amount of time. While you can take months or years to study the intricacies of social media and craft business strategies, there are five common myths that business owners can dispel today.
Myth #1: You must use every single social media platform.
Expanding your reach is certainly a goal for business owners and coaches as that yields more sales and personal clients, which equals increased income. However, the real question to ask before signing up for every platform is: Where is my ideal client? Using Facebook just because it has over 1 billion users doesn’t mean those users will find you and start purchasing. Identify your ideal client and find out where they hang out. Those are the platforms you should use.
That said, be conscious of the kinds of activities you are thinking about doing from a marketing perspective too. While LinkedIn is undoubtedly the platform for professionals and B2B relationships, Facebook still has better engagement for groups. If most of your potential clients are on LinkedIn but you plan to run a private group as part of your marketing plan, Facebook would still need consideration. Also consider what you are using social media for in your marketing campaigns. Is it for brand recognition, engagement or conversion? Instagram for instance has been huge for brand recognition for us, however we get no conversion to clients from this platform – yet. The good news is that the brand recognition from Instagram does carry over to other platforms where we have higher conversion rates.
Myth #2: Aim for every post to go viral.
It’s always fun to see a post go viral as they are usually entertaining or thought provoking. However, of the viral campaigns you’ve noticed recently, could you say what company sponsored them? I can’t either. Aim to provide value in your posts mixed in with some of your personality, as opposed to aiming for shock or entertainment value. Your ideal client wants to learn valuable lessons from you that will be remembered long after the latest viral video fades away.
Myth #3: Having a large number of followers equals increased profits.
It sure is an ego boost to see a large number of followers. However, are these followers interacting with you? Are they liking or sharing your posts? Are they leaving comments? If not, chances are they are not your ideal client and they will likely never purchase one of your packages. Evaluate your own posts; it’s quite possible they’re boring and that’s the reason for no response. Be more creative with your posts and watch for audience interaction. This directs back to the need for niching down to your ideal customer. You’re not appealing to everyone; you’re appealing to a small fraction of the world’s population. So, pay attention to finding that demographic and the number of engaged audience members will follow, as will the profits.
Myth #4 – You only need to use Social Media Marketing in your marketing strategy
Remember that Marketing encompasses many different strategies and processes and that Social media is just one strategy to use. To be effective in your marketing efforts Social media should relate to other areas. As a minimum you should be employing a combination of Blogging, Social media and Email Marketing as part of your marketing efforts. Without these your social media efforts will go nowhere. It’s rare that someone will find you on social media having never heard of you and then want to become a client, especially in the coaching industry where buying decisions are made based on things like your trust factor, branding, pricing and value.
The journey looks more like:
- A prospect sees you posted something on social media that resonates with them and clicks the link to your website.
- The prospect reads one of you blog posts and buys in to your thought leadership and how it applies to their challenge.
- Prospect signs up for one of your lead magnets that helps them with their challenge and in turn becomes a lead
- Lead receives your email marketing information which provides more value to help them solve their challenge.
- Lead reaches out to pursue becoming a client after receiving several pieces of valuable information which have helped them to overcome some of their challenges.
Myth #5 – My ideal clients are not on social media
This one goes hand in hand with the “My business is built on word of mouth referrals “ myth. First of all, there are over 2.39 billion people ACTIVE on social media. I’m pretty sure there are one or two in there that are your ideal clients. Secondly, Social media is the best word of mouth tool. Reviews, endorsements and recommendations get way more eyes on them on social media platforms than you could possibly get from any one person recommending you. The key here is to ensure that you have a good review process in place. If your clients love you, they will not hesitate to give you a review on social media. This is also proof that you ideal clients are indeed using social media.
In summary, social media marketing is one of many marketing strategies that you should be employing to market your business. However, as with all marketing efforts, success is achieved when social media is used deliberately; As part of a marketing plan aimed towards giving value to a highly targeted ideal client.
Do you feel like social media marketing or any of your marketing activities are way too time-consuming? Are you dissatisfied with the ROI on your marketing activities? If yes, I invite you to a complimentary exploration call with us so we can talk about creating a marketing plan for you that helps – not hinders – your business growth.
Now it’s your turn!
