Where do my customers come from?
Marketing 101 tells us that in order to plan and roll out a successful marketing campaign, we need to be 100% aware of who our customers are, where they shop, what they like, what they will pay, what media they consume, who they socialise with, as well as a host of other questions and categories. The more we know about them, the more effectively we can reach them, as well as craft and create solutions to their perceived problems (ie products and services to sell them).
What Facebook doesn’t know, isn’t worth knowing…
You may already have guessed, but facebook already has access to a range of information about us. Facebook knows whether we are male or female, our birthdate, our location, where we went to school, our interests, the places we go and when, and the time of day we log on. It also can measure the interests, gender and other influences of our friends and the people we connect with. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Obviously this information about millions of users around the world that Facebook has collected is worth a fortune! This factor alone is what makes Facebook an extremely accurate marketing tool for virtually any business, no matter how large or small. Its ability to reach a quality and attentive audience for your business is incredibly accurate and guaranteed to generate valuable sales, leads and referrals.
An introduction to Social Metrics
Access to this type of information about your target clientele, and a measure of return on investment of our social media marketing, falls under the umbrella known as social metrics. Social metrics describes the capacity to measure visitors and sources of traffic to your website, the network size of our fans and followers, and the quantity of commentary about your brand or product.
The important questions
The types of questions that any business with a social media strategy needs to be asking themselves are as follows:
- Where does your web traffic come from – eg facebook, Google AdWords, etc
- How long do each of these leads stay on your website and on which pages?
- Are your followers and fans growing over time and do they interact with your content?
- Are your social media fans converting into customers? What prompts the change from fan to client – ie a particular time frame or message?
- Do your members re-share your content? When do they do this and what type of content are they more inclined to share?
- Who are your clients, who are their friends, how do they interact on social media and how can you take advantage of this knowledge to communicate with them, and sell to them?
So, how do I know…?
There are a number of nifty tools that will help you measure these items, or alternatively a third party supplier, such as SponsoredLinx, can keep a check on these for you, and prepare a report for each of these items.
As with any marketing campaign, social media needs to be constantly monitored and reviewed to ensure it is doing its job and not losing your business money by letting quality leads and customers slip under the cracks. Just because it doesn’t cost you as much as traditional advertising means, it doesn’t mean it is a set and forget strategy, or that it will bring customers in its own time. It needs to be constantly monitored and nurtured, and as a business owner, you need to educate yourself as to the exciting new trends happening in the world of internet marketing so that you can take advantage of them too, and avoid being left behind!