Michelle Krasniak - Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies

Both Briscoe and Moss have important insights to share. Briscoe reminds people to keep posting and experimenting. “Don’t be afraid to not have the perfect content because that doesn’t exist. You can’t please everyone with just a single post,” he says.

Adds Moss, “Always remember that your true north is your customer; they are your guiding compass and will tell you all you want to know. You just have to ask.”

Following is a list of sites that make up HCSS’s web presence:

www.hcss.com

http://cia.hcss.com

www.facebook.com/HCSS4Construction

www.youtube.com/hcsssoftware

https://twitter.com/hcss

https://twitter.com/hcsssupport

www.linkedin.com/company/hcss

www.ibuildamerica.com

www.instagram.com/ibuildamerica/?hl=en

www.linkedin.com/company/i-build-america

www.youtube.com/ibuildamerica

https://twitter.com/ibamerica

Chapter 3

IN THIS CHAPTER

Finding your audience online

Segmenting B2C markets

Conducting B2B research online

Planning your strategy

In Chapter 1of this minibook, we talk about making the business case for social media marketing, looking at the question of whether you should or shouldn’t get involved. That chapter is about strategy, goals, and objectives — this one is about tactics. It helps you decide which social media services best fit your marketing objectives and your target market.

Let your customers and prospects drive your selection of social media alternatives. To see the best return on your investment in social media, you need to try to use the same social media as they do. This principle is the same one you apply to all your other marketing and advertising efforts. Social media is a new tactic, not a new world.

Fish where your fish are. If your potential customers aren’t on a particular social media outlet, don’t start a campaign on that outlet.

In this chapter, we show how to use online market research to assess the match between your target markets and various social media outlets. After you do that, you’re ready to start filling out your own Social Media Marketing Plan, which appears at the end of this chapter.

Nothing is more important in marketing than identifying and understanding your target audience (or audiences). After you can describe your customers’ and prospects’ demographic characteristics, where they live, and what social media they use, you’re in a position to focus your social marketing efforts on those people most likely to buy your products or services. (Be sure to include the description of your target market in your Social Media Marketing Goals statement, discussed in Book 1, Chapter 1.)

Because social media techniques focus on inexpensive ways to reach niche markets with specific messages, they’re tailor-made for a guerrilla-marketing approach. As with all guerrilla-marketing activities, target one market at a time.

Don’t dilute your marketing budget or labor by trying to reach too many audiences at a time. People still need to see your message or brand name at least seven times to remember it. Trying to boost yourself to the forefront of everyone’s mind all at once is expensive.

Focus your resources on one niche at a time. After you succeed, invest your profits in the next niche. It may seem counterintuitive, but it works.

Don’t let setting priorities among niches paralyze you. Your choice of niches usually doesn’t matter. If you aren’t sure, go first for what seems to be the biggest market or the easiest one to reach.

If you have a business-to-consumer (B2C) company, you can adapt the standard tools of market segmentation, which is a technique to define various niche audiences by where they live and how they spend their time and money. The most common types of segmentation are

Demographics

Geographic location

Life-stage-based purchasing behavior

Psychographics or lifestyle

Affinity or interest groups

These categories affect not only your social media tactics but also your graphics, message, content, offers, and every other aspect of your marketing.

Your messages need to be specific enough to satisfy the needs and wants of the distinct subgroups you’re trying to reach.

Suppose that you want to sell a line of organic, herbal hair care products using social media. If you described your target market as “everyone who uses shampoo” in your Social Media Marketing Goals statement (see Book 1, Chapter 1), segment that market into different subgroups before you select appropriate social marketing techniques.

When you’re creating subgroups, keep these concepts in mind:

Simple demographics affect your market definition. The use of fragrances, descriptive terms, and even packaging may vary by gender. How many shampoo commercials for men talk about silky hair? For that matter, what’s the ratio of shampoo commercials addressed to women versus men?

Consider geography. Geography may not seem obvious, but people who live in dry climates may be more receptive to a message about moisturizers than people who live in humid climates. Or perhaps your production capacity constrains your initial product launch to a local or regional area.

Think about how purchasing behavior changes with life stages. For example, people who dye their hair look for different hair care products than those who don’t, but the reason they color their hair affects your selling message. (Teenagers and young adults may dye their hair unusual colors in an effort to belong to a group of their peers; older men may hide the gray with Grecian Formula; women with kids might be interested in fashion, or color their hair as a pick-me-up.)

Even lifestyles (psychographics) affect decisions. People with limited resources who are unlikely to try new products may respond to messages about value and satisfaction guarantees; people with more resources or a higher status may be affected by messages related to social grouping and self-esteem.

Affinity or interest groups are an obvious segmentation parameter. People who participate in environmental organizations or who recycle goods may be more likely to be swayed by a green shampoo appeal or shop in specific online venues.

Different niche markets are drawn to different social media activities in general and to specific social media service providers in particular. In the following several sections, we look in detail at different online tools you can use to explore the parameters that seem the most appropriate for segmenting your audience and selecting specific social media sites.