The end of mass media as we know it.
The emperor’s new clothes.
The future of eCommerce.
A passing fad.
Everybody seems to have a very strong opinion on social media, one way or the other. But almost nobody’s opinion is based on the facts. It’s always ideological; their view on social media is grounded in what they want it to be, or what they hope it will become.
If you take a step back and look at the facts, it all becomes very clear.
Social media is without doubt the most common way that people receive information today. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. People get their news from Facebook, they look for jobs on LinkedIn, and they sell products through Instagram.
The people who dismiss social media as just an extension of existing ways of doing things obviously don’t understand how it works (people always disparage things they don’t understand).
Social media has changed the way we interact with the world. People are no longer passive consumers of news; they’re curators, broadcasters, and producers of news. Authority, expertise, relevance – no longer are these the sold domains of the big broadsheet newspapers or broadcasters. Quite the opposite.
Nobody watches TV commercials anymore. As soon as they come on, they pick up their smartphones and scroll through social channels.
To put it bluntly, the world has changed.
Attention has gone elsewhere, and with it, influence.
If you want to stay relevant, and you want to get people’s attention, then you need to be where that attention is; on social media.
Social Is Still Under-Priced
In the past, your marketing team would develop a single piece of content and run it across every single media platform – print, radio, TV, everything.
The problem with that approach was that it is extremely broad and the waste is staggering. Say a billboard is seen by 25% of the motorists who pass it – and that’s assuming they’re all driving. Of those, maybe 5% take in the information. Of those, maybe a few percent are interested, and one or two might act on it. So for the £25,000 you’ve spent on the billboard, you might get a couple of leads in return.
A well thought-out social media campaign works in the opposite way.
Instead of making a single piece of content aimed at the lowest common denominator, social media allows you to create dozens of pieces of content, each tailored to a very specific target audience.
You could write 5 different pieces of content for LinkedIn and push them on slightly different customer bases. Repeat that across Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, and you have a highly targeted, easily monitored and focused marketing campaign for a fraction of the cost of a billboard.
A billboard doesn’t let you target specific demographics. LinkedIn lets you target a specific individual.
Despite this, traditional media still charge far higher advertising rates than social media channels. It will cost you a hundred times more money to put a small ad in the Telegraph – seen by absolutely nobody who might place an order with your business – than it will to put an ad directly in front of Head of Procurement at a major company.
At some point, people will realize that social media advertising is seriously under-priced (to say nothing of the value of social media editorial). They’ll also realize that print and TV advertising is the biggest rip-off imaginable. When they do, they’ll flock to Instagram and Facebook and the prices will soar.
But until that happens, social media remains the biggest opportunity for small to medium sized businesses today.
What We Offer
Organic & Paid Channel Management
We will handle all of the day-to-day management of all your social media accounts. We don’t mean we’ll do the bare minimum of sending out two boring Tweets per day. Instead, we’ll sit down with you and come up with a serious social media strategy to grow your business. We’ll create tailored, targeted copy for each platform – and each demographic – and go on a serious publication spree. Whether your goal is clicks, engagements, or followers, we’ll get you the results you’re looking for.
We’ll also manage your social media ad spending. This means planning your approach carefully and making sure your money is spent wisely. We start small and increase spend incrementally in the areas that it is working. We constantly monitor performance and present you with a detailed report at the end of each month. If we notice that your money is going a long way on one platform or in a certain context, we’ll suggest running more in the same way. Likewise for when it isn’t working well.
Influencer Outreach
We can identify key social media influencers in your niche and reach out to them for you. These key influencers can then help spread awareness of your brand, your services, or your team’s own channels.
“Influencer” is a bit of a buzzword these days, but it’s actually a really effective marketing tactic. It also happens to be one of the least utilized by businesses. Traditional businesses are often afraid to reach out to people they see as not “respectable” – they stick to their trade magazines and the odd local paper. But if it were us, we’d rather have one of the biggest Instagram accounts in your industry talking about us than have a press release in a trade magazine; it’s cheaper, more adaptable, and keeps on paying dividends after the fact.
We think we’re excellent at influencer outreach. It doesn’t matter if your business sells gearboxes or corporate legal advice – having key influencers on board is going to make a difference to your bottom line.
Contact us today and we’ll tell you exactly how we can help your business grow. Or alternatively, just fill in the form below and we’ll get right back to you.